From the biggest waves of the ocean to the tiniest of the atoms tick at their own frequencies. While some are extremely periodic, others shift through time. The watch on your wrist or the clock on your wall might tell you the time of the day but what do we turn to when we need to record time with extreme precision and accuracy such as in picoseconds? We turn to the atoms! Yes, atomic clocks are used throughout scientific instruments on Earth and the outer space, and forms the basis of the Global Positioning system among other innumerable resources that take power from the precision measurements and timekeeping standards, running essentially at the backbone of our everyday worlds. Reeling into the world of atomic clocks and trying to understand their fundamentals as well as the technology, we converse with the man behind India’s first ever indigenous space-based clock, Prof. Thejesh Bandi, currently an associate professor at the University of Alabama, US and the former Division Head of the Atomic Clocks Division at SAC, ISRO. P.S.: This conversation was recorded before the launch of the first Indigenous atomic clock, which has since then been demonstrated to be working successfully in space! Stay tuned for the full episode coming out soon!

Artwork by: Akshita Arora