{"id":3059,"date":"2022-07-29T16:04:30","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T16:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3059"},"modified":"2022-07-29T16:04:31","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T16:04:31","slug":"zeptosecond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3059","title":{"rendered":"Zeptosecond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the years that I\u2019ve been writing this blog, the subject has been \u201ctime\u201d on a number of occasions. From daylight saving \u201ctime\u201d to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which is now referred to as UTC (Universal Time Coordinated.) Various times have fascinated me and with the advanced technologies and space travels, time, particularly accurate<\/em> time, is more important than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the fundamental mysteries surrounding the concept of time is whether it\u2019s continuous and our chronological measurements are just a way of making sense of it, or if it actually breaks down into discrete \u201cticks\u201d that are very<\/em> tiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So time is an abstract concept at best, but the dimensions for measuring time are so tiny that the classical laws of physics don\u2019t really count. The smallest viable measurement of time is derived from a unit of distance called the Planck length. That\u2019s where dimensions become so small that the classical laws of physics break down and quantum effects kick in. That point is about 1.6 x 10-35<\/sup>m. From that point, physicists speak of the smallest theoretical period of time as being the interval required for a photon traveling at the speed of light to cover the Planck length, or just 0.5 x 10-43<\/sup> seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, scientists at Goethe University in Germany actually measured the world\u2019s smallest unit of time and its called a zeptosecond. The scientists measured how long it takes for a photon to cross a hydrogen molecule \u2014 around 247 zeptoseconds \u2014 making that measurement the shortest time span ever successfully recorded. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billion of a second. In case you\u2019re interested, that\u2019s a decimal point followed by 20 zeroes and a 1 \u2014 it looks like this: 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 001<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A yocotosecond is a septillionth of a second \u2014 but has not been measured and recorded.\u00a0
If you\u2019re interested in why anyone even cares, scientists hope the information will be helpful in quantum computing and superconductivity.
Also, in case you\u2019re interested, the best atomic clocks can measure down to a tenth of a billionth of a billionth of a second (ten to the 19th power.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I say something didn\u2019t take very long, I always use \u201cnanosecond\u201d \u2014 I never knew that was such a long period of time.
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years that I\u2019ve been writing this blog, the subject has been \u201ctime\u201d on a number of occasions. From daylight saving \u201ctime\u201d to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which is now referred to as UTC (Universal Time Coordinated.) Various times … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3060,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions\/3060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}