[time-nuts] GENIUS by Stephen Hawking (PBS TV), with 5071A cesium clocks

[Tom Van Baak]

The TV show is tomorrow, Wednesday evening. 8/9 PM, or something like that.

Here are fresh web pages with background information, photos, and plots:

http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/

http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/photos.htm

I have no idea how minor my role is in the actual TV episode, but if nothing else, the above two pages will share some time nuts sort of details of the clock experiment itself. If you have any questions let me know.

/tvb

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Van Baak" <tvb at LeapSecond.com>
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" <time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 12:00 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] GENIUS by Stephen Hawking (PBS TV),with 5071A cesium clocks


Fellow time nuts,

Here in the US, a new six-part TV series on National Geographic / PBS starts next Wednesday, May 18th, 2016. The title is "Genius by Stephen Hawking" and episode 1 is: Can We Time Travel?

Having not seen it yet, I can't make a promise of its "SNR" (Science to Nonsense Ratio). It might be quite educational, or at least, very entertaining. And I'm definitely going to watch it with my family.

So why do I mention this?

Well, I spent most of December 2015 and January 2016 working with the UK-based producers of the show -- in order to pull off another Einstein 100th anniversary, general relativity, cesium atomic clock, gravitational time dilation experiment. The location chosen was 9000+ foot Mt Lemmon, near Tucson, Arizona.

The Hawking series covers a wide variety of topics, and this atomic clock bit is just one very small part. They were inspired by the DIY experiment I did ( http://leapsecond.com/great2005/tour/ ) and they wanted to create and film something similar. So I offered to help. Scenes with (me? and) my 5071A cesium clocks and hp 53132A / SR620 time interval counters are in episode 1.

The PR link to the episode is:

http://www.pbs.org/genius-by-stephen-hawking/episodes/episode-1/

Attached is a photo. I will post lots of technical info, plots, photos and FAQ here next week:

http://leapsecond.com/great2016a/

/tvb