Few people know as much about the importance of time as The University of Western Australia's Winthrop Professor Michael Tobar.

His spearheading work includes measuring time to improve international clock technology and research in space to test fundamental rules of physics.  He also co-developed the world's most precise clock - the sapphire oscillator.  Known as the Cryogenic Sapphire Oscillator, it measures time with unprecedented accuracy - plus or minus a second every 60 million years or so.

In a free public lecture, ‘It's About Time: the Quest for a Physical Theory of Everything', the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and 2010 WA Scientist of the Year will give an overview of his work as well as his research with the European Space Agency's Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES) mission on board the International Space Station.

This project will send the first laser-cooler atomic clock into space and usher in a new era of precision timing. 

ACES has the potential to revolutionise global positioning systems, navigation, geodesy (the scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the Earth, including its gravitational field, in a three-dimensional time-varying space) and precision tests of physics such as Einstein's theories of relativity and fundamental constants.

The lecture is an ‘Inspiring Australia' initiative presented by UWA's Institute of Advanced Studies and Scitech.

WHAT:           ‘It's About Time: the Quest for a Physical Theory of Everything', free public Lecture

WHERE:        Lotterywest Science Theatre, Scitech

WHEN:           6pm Thursday 21June

RSVP:             Required

Media references

Winthrop Professor Michael Tobar (UWA School of Physics)  (+61 8)  6488 3443
Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8) 6488 3229 / (+61 4) 00 700 783