Why is precision timekeeping so important? - with the National Physical Laboratory

Delve into the fascinating and delicate realm of timekeeping. Discover how atomic clocks have replaced the Earth as our time reference and how the present and future challenges in measuring and delivering time are met by the home of UK time, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). 00:00 Intro to time measurement 3:14 How timekeeping was standardised 8:37 The atomic clock revolution 12:11 How is time now measured with UTC? 19:02 Why is accurate time needed by the finance sector? 21:07 Accurate time stamps prevent stock market crashes 28:03 How NPL supports the financial sector 33:11 Why time is a hidden utility for GPS 37:26 The risks of position, navigation and timing dependency 40:37 The future of the time scale 43:57 A nationwide timing infrastructure 46:43 Optical atomic clocks for the future 48:04 How do atomic clocks work? 55:05 The extreme accuracy of optical clocks 1:01:19 Redefining what a second is Join our YouTube channel membership and get access to the Q&A for this talk here: https://youtu.be/A5xImb19Yxg This lecture was recorded at the Ri on 26 October 2023. We kick off with Peter Whibberley, a senior scientist with many years experience exploring the world of timekeeping. Peter takes us on a brief journey through the history of time, explaining how the national time scale is created today, and how it is a key part of the global collaboration that creates the precise time and frequency measurement on which life and business relies today. Resilient time signal dissemination from the national time scale is crucial to NPL's mission, ensuring traceable timestamping and time synchronisation across industries, enhancing market clarity in the financial sector, and enabling regulatory forensics in the event of a crash. Elena Parsons will share valuable insights into how NPL spearheads the delivery of resilient time signals, granting industry access through innovation and service nodes. Gain a deeper understanding of the vital role played by NPL in maintaining accurate and reliable timekeeping. Looking to the near future, Leon Lobo, a visionary in the field, shed slight on what lies ahead for the world of timekeeping. Exploring the strategies and innovations aimed at future-proofing resilient time, mitigating our over-reliance on weak and vulnerable signals from space-based global navigation satellite systems such as GPS. Learn about the leading-edge initiatives spearheaded by NPL to ensure timekeeping remains robust and adaptable in an ever-changing world. Lastly, looking even further ahead at developments in precision timekeeping, we close the lecture with Rachel Godun, a principal scientist in the field, who unveils NPL's research programme into next-generation optical atomic clocks. Discover how these clocks will improve the performance of future time scales and are so accurate that they will even be used to redefine the unit of time itself. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYeF244yNGuFefuFKqxIAXw/join Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe The Ri is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution and TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ri_science Listen to the Ri podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ri-science-podcast Donate to the RI and help us bring you more lectures: https://www.rigb.org/support-us/donate-ri Our editorial policy: https://www.rigb.org/editing-ri-talks-and-moderating-comments Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter Product links on this page may be affiliate links which means it won't cost you any extra but we may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through the link.