About time: metronomes at Perimeter

A performance of “Poème Symphonique,” György Ligeti’s 1962 composition for 100 metronomes, was a fitting musical interlude for Perimeter’s “Time in Cosmology” conference in June 2016, attended by dozens of leading minds from fields including physics, philosophy, and biology.

The scientific and philosophical questions examined at the conference have been studied, in one form or another, for millennia. Why does time seem to only move forward? Is time fundamental to the world, or inessential? Such questions transcend any single academic discipline, necessitating the diverse group of attendees.

The speakers in this video were attendees of the conference, including Lee Smolin, Marina Cortes, Neil Turok, Fay Dowker, Carlo Rovelli, and others.

Read more about the conference here. You can also watch a full-length documentary, Age of Uncertainty, filmed during the conference by Quantum Entanglement Entertainment.