Now how long is that?

[Deepak]

Link

Scientists squeeze less time into an instant
By Lucy Sherriff
Posted: 26/02/2004 at 15:22 GMT

Teams at Germany's Max Planck Institute and the University of Vienna have sliced time more finely that ever before. The researchers successfuly recorded an interval of one ten million billionth of a second: that's shorter than the period of an electron's orbit in a hydrogen atom.

They used pulses of UV light, each lasting 250 attoseconds (a thousand million billionth of a second), to excite atoms. When excited atoms relax, they emit electrons to carry away the excess energy.

The team recorded the path of these electrons*, using a laser recorder. The position of the negative charges were marked at intervals of 100 attoseconds, in what must be the ultimate achievement in slow-motion photography. To put this in context: an attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 300 million years.

The smallest time interval measured prior to this result was ten times longer: an interminable million billionth of a second.

The results are published in full in Nature. ®

*There is no suggestion that these elctrons have been using any performance enhancing substances. Not even designer, undetectable ones.

 

[AlphaWolf]

When can I expect the more accurate stop watches to ship?

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

That's a very small number. I'm speechless.
What exactly this would mean for computing?

 

[StefanS]

Link

Scientists squeeze less time into an instant
By Lucy Sherriff
Posted: 26/02/2004 at 15:22 GMT

Teams at Germany's Max Planck Institute and the University of Vienna have sliced time more finely that ever before. The researchers successfuly recorded an interval of one ten million billionth of a second: that's shorter than the period of an electron's orbit in a hydrogen atom.

I hate it, if journalists mix things up. For god's sake it was the Technical University of Vienna (in other words the good guys), not the University of Vienna.

 

[kyleb]

cool, now i can go back and stick this in the face of all the morons who tried to argue that the old measured value was proof that time had a minimum increment. unfortunately, i am sure i will have to deal with a bunch more morons who think this measured value proves finite increments of time.

 

[epicstruggle]

cool, now i can go back and stick this in the face of all the morons who tried to argue that the old measured value was proof that time had a minimum increment. unfortunately, i am sure i will have to deal with a bunch more morons who think this measured value proves finite increments of time.

Why the eyes, I can see where you might think that there is a minimum increment. I dont agree with the theory, but to the best of my knowledge it hasnt been proven wrong/right. There is only so much we can do with current state of electronics/physics. Look the measured the movement of an electron, it would be incredible if they could measure distances of things smaller than that.

later
epic

 

[kyleb]

the rolling eyes wasn't directed at anyone here, i was simply expressing my general dissatisfaction that comes from dealing with people who misinterpret information for the purpose of forming bunk arguments. the smallest unit of time has never been proven right, and it probably won't be proven wrong either; but inevitably i will come across someone who will try to use this data to support the argument.

 

[DemoCoder]

The real boon for these kind of measurements is to eventually be able to do very long baseline interferometry on optical wavelengths. That is, recording both the phase and amplitude of visible light for recombination later. We do this now with radio telescopes, but you need to be able to record phase information about light at 400-700 terahertz frequencies with super-accurate time measurements (and sub-micron length measurements) Thus, you near the ability to sample frequencies at intervals from femto to atto seconds. We could be the ultimate telescope if this were possible.

When you can find me a PCI Analog-to-digital converter card that can sample at one thousand trillion samples/sec, let me know. Oh, and I'll need to be able to store between 10^15 and 10^19 bytes of info, in real time.

 

[Silent_One]

I heard about this on the news the other day. Appraently one of the other uses for this technique is that this could potentially be used to show how actual subatomic chemical and biochemical bonds are formed and broken. This could lead to new chemicals, medicines, materials with new and different properties, ect....It's really quite interesting.

 

[VtC]

When can I expect the more accurate stop watches to ship?

You have a calibrated thumb?

Cool!

 

[Snyder]

Link

Scientists squeeze less time into an instant
By Lucy Sherriff
Posted: 26/02/2004 at 15:22 GMT

Teams at Germany's Max Planck Institute and the University of Vienna have sliced time more finely that ever before. The researchers successfuly recorded an interval of one ten million billionth of a second: that's shorter than the period of an electron's orbit in a hydrogen atom.

I hate it, if journalists mix things up. For god's sake it was the Technical University of Vienna (in other words the good guys), not the University of Vienna.

Technical University of Vienna? Pah! It's Vienna University of Technology!