November 2022 Ask a Physicist–What time is it and how do we know?
Join us for a monthly webinar series, ASK A PHYSICIST, with renowned physicists Paul Davies, Sara Walker and Maulik Parikh from the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University. Each webinar will address a big question in physics and the audience can submit questions ahead of time or during the webinar to add to the discussion! This month, Paul Davies and Sara Walker will be joined by guest presenter Gerard Milburn, a theoretical quantum physicist at the University of Queensland.
November's webinar: What time is it and how do we know?
Humanity has puzzled over the nature of time for millennia. All civilizations have tried to engineer time by making clocks, from ancient Roman water clocks to modern quantum clocks. What is a clock? Do clocks measure time? I will discuss recent developments in the fundamental study of clocks that show irreversibility is central to their operation. Can this reconcile our experience of time and the reversible nature of physical law?