10 March 2008

In no time at all: "JUST a second"

from: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time

No one keeps track of time better than Ferenc Krausz. In his lab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, he has clocked the shortest time intervals ever observed. Krausz uses ultraviolet laser pulses to track the absurdly brief quantum leaps of electrons within atoms. The events he probes last for about 100 attoseconds, or 100 quintillionths of a second. For a little perspective, 100 attoseconds is to one second as a second is to 300 million years.

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Hawaii, United States
trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
O, dreadful is the check — intense the agonyWhen the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see;When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again,The soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain. - Emily Bronte, "The Prisoner