25-hour days, runaway Higgs boson… Were you fooled?

On 1 April, CERN announced that a new measurement of the second, achieved with a caesium fountain clock, indicated that days were bound to get one hour longer, while the ATLAS and CMS collaborations breathed a sigh of relief after recovering the Higgs boson, which had mysteriously disappeared.

With April Fools’ Day now behind us, the Organization can confirm that, sadly, we do have to make do with 24 hours a day. But did you know that a caesium fountain clock is truly in operation at CERN, more precisely at the ALPHA experiment, in the Antimatter Factory? The experiment is using it to take precise measurements of the spectra of antihydrogen.