Professor Gunnar Björk – Quantum Electronics and Optics, Department of Applied Physics, KTH

Title: Time and its keeping

Abstract: Time is one of the most fundamental parameters that govern our lives. Timekeeping is consequently one of the oldest scientific and technological fields that humans have studied. Through relativity, time is also intimately coupled to space and gravity. We all have clocks that we think shows a universal time (or at least one agreed upon on Earth) although we know that time is always a relative concept. I will give a brief survey of modern timekeeping techniques and technologies, and look into what we can expect in the near future when time indeed will become relative.