One of the ions gets pumped into metastable states using a focussed laser beam. The lifetime of the metastable state is measured by recording the time when the dark ion starts fluorescing again. Researchers from the Universities of Amsterdam and New South Wales have now discovered that the ytterbium ion (Yb⁺), a leading candidate for both technologies, can remain in previously unexplored states for surprisingly long times. One of these was for spectroscopy measurements, and the other to continuously cool and stabilize the system without disturbing the metastable state being studied. This allowed us to watch the ion remain in a metastable state and precisely time its decay.