What is the Shortest Interval of Time Ever Measured?
The shortest interval of time ever measured is 100 attoseconds (as), a billion billionths of a second. The measurement was achieved by a research team led by Professor Ferenc Krausz, of the Technische Universitat Wien in Austria. The scientists used tomographic imagery to record the state of an electron 100 attoseconds after its departure from the nucleus of an atom. The electron was ejected by pulses of extreme ultraviolet (XUV) laser light. The shorter the wavelength, the more energy you can pack into an electromagnetic beam, and extreme ultraviolet represents a tiny wavelength of only 10nm-100nm, around the size of a large molecule. The only forms of electromagnetic radiation with shorter wavelengths are x-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays. The computer you are using to access this web page probably runs somewhere a little over 1 GHz, or gigahertz, which means it executes about a billion operations per second. The shortest interval of time yet measured, 100 attoseconds, could fit in
