Do you feel time is passing too slow or too fast at times? Passing of time, be it in hours, minutes or days has been constant. And now scientists have introduced a new measure called zeptosecond, which is the shortest unit of time ever. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second (10-21 seconds)! They measured it using a time a light particle takes to cross through a hydrogen molecule. Let us understand more about this unit of time measurement and how scientists derived it. The Definition of a Kilogram Has Changed! Here is What it Means.
What is Zeptosecond?
A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second. It is a decimal point followed by 20 zeroes and a 1. Physicist Reinhard Dörner of Goethe University in Germany and his colleagues used this measurement and found out that it takes247 zeptoseconds for a photon to cross a hydrogen molecule. In order to conduct this measurement, the team shot X-rays from the PETRA III at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), a particle accelerator in Hamburg. The energy was set so that only one photon was enough to send electrons out of hydrogen molecule. Cosmic Conundrum: How Fast is The Universe Expanding?
The photon bounced one electron out of the molecule, and then the other. This kind of interaction created a wave-like pattern which the team of scientists measured with tool called a Cold Target Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy (COLTRIMS) reaction microscope. This tool helps to detect sensitive particles and fast molecular reactions.
This is not the first time researchers have explored into zeptoseconds. Back in 2016, they used lasers to measure time in increments that went down to 850 zeptoseconds. In 1999 Nobel Prize-winning work measured time in femtoseconds, which are millionths of a billionths of seconds. The recent finding is more accurate and important to study chemical bonds.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 23, 2020 02:49 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).