{"id":217906,"date":"2025-07-15T02:17:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T07:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/the-dark-side-of-time-scientists-develop-nuclear-clock-method-to-detect-dark-matter-using-thorium-229"},"modified":"2025-07-15T02:17:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T07:17:56","slug":"the-dark-side-of-time-scientists-develop-nuclear-clock-method-to-detect-dark-matter-using-thorium-229","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/the-dark-side-of-time-scientists-develop-nuclear-clock-method-to-detect-dark-matter-using-thorium-229","title":{"rendered":"The dark side of time: Scientists develop nuclear clock method to detect dark matter using thorium-229"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-dark-side-of-time-scientists-develop-nuclear-clock-method-to-detect-dark-matter-using-thorium-2292.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For nearly a century, scientists around the world have been searching for dark matter\u2014an invisible substance believed to make up about 80% of the universe\u2019s mass and needed to explain a variety of physical phenomena. Numerous methods have been used in attempts to detect dark matter, from trying to produce it in particle accelerators to searching for cosmic radiation that it might emit in space.<\/p>\n<p>Yet even today, very little is known about this matter\u2019s fundamental properties. Although it operates in the background, dark matter is believed to influence visible matter, but in ways so subtle that they currently cannot be directly measured.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists believe that if a nuclear clock is developed\u2014one that uses the atomic nucleus to measure time with <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/extreme+precision\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">extreme precision <\/a>\u2014even the tiniest irregularities in its ticking could reveal dark matter\u2019s influence. Last year, physicists in Germany and Colorado made a breakthrough toward building such a clock, using the radioactive element thorium-229.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For nearly a century, scientists around the world have been searching for dark matter\u2014an invisible substance believed to make up about 80% of the universe\u2019s mass and needed to explain a variety of physical phenomena. Numerous methods have been used in attempts to detect dark matter, from trying to produce it in particle accelerators to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}