Dawn Yang
Ekkehard Peik is a clock-maker. But instead of spending his days looking at tiny cogs and springs through a magnifying glass, the tools of his trade are powerful lasers, wires and, occasionally, radioactive atoms. Peik, director of the German metrology institute (PTB), is one of a handful of physicists who have spent the best part of three decades trying to make the most accurate timepiece in the universe.
Since the 1950s, researchers have been constructing atomic clocks, the very best of which are now so accurate they only lose a second in around 31 billion years. But these are about…
