Smallest unit of time?

Now wait a second..

On the one hand we measure distance using the constant velocity of light.. light years etc.. we can also measure time based on the velocity of light.. light-meters, light-nonameters, etc..

Whats the time it takes light to travel say.. from an electron to the nucleus of the atom that holds it? Wouldnt that be at least close to the smallest concievable measurable time interval?
 
rockoon said:

Whats the time it takes light to travel say.. from an electron to the nucleus of the atom that holds it? Wouldnt that be at least close to the smallest concievable measurable time interval?
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First let's be careful about what we mean by conceivable: do you mean what we can ever hope to achieve, or do you mean in terms of absolute physical limits of possibility? For example, we can't make black holes, and none may exist with masses as small as, say, the earth, but such a black hole is to our current understanding at least possible in the universe. So we can conceive of them existing, but we can't conceive of making one.

More directly with regards to your question, I'd say no, it's conceivable to get smaller time intervals. Since the nucleus of an atom is much smaller than the electron radius, nuclear processes can conceivably happen on shorter time scales than what you described. Of course, actually using that to measure something might be a challenge, to say the least, so perhaps that's not "conceivable" yet, if you get my drift.
 
Consider three billiard balls converging on a single point (or you could make them point particles if you like). An interesting question is whether a perfect three-way collision is possible.
 
I remember reading in Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps that the quantum fluctions in space at a certain level would warp space as well as time so much that it wouldn't have the same meaning as we normally concieve it. I could have paraphrased that wrong though. Maybe Tez could elaborate? :)
 

I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.
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An abruptly retired computer engineer as quoted in The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
 
Dylab said:
I remember reading in Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps that the quantum fluctions in space at a certain level would warp space as well as time so much that it wouldn't have the same meaning as we normally concieve it. I could have paraphrased that wrong though. Maybe Tez could elaborate? :)
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Nope - the paraphrasing sounds fine.

An equivalent paraphrasing would be:

We really have no freaking idea how the hell to understand spacetime once you allow for it to have quantum uncertainty at the Planck scale.
 
The smallest unit of time is a "spouse".

This is defined as the time that elapses between entering your front door and your wife detecting the odour of perfume on your person.
 
When I was in college the smallest unit of time was a "danosecond". It was defined as the time it took for my roomate Dan to decide whether he'd "do" a hot chick. He wasn't too particular. :D
 
wayrad said:
Don't forget the:

femtosquidgin
attosquidgin
zeptosquidgin
and yoctosquidgen (honest!)
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Femto and atto I've heard of. Zepto? Are you sure that's not Zeppo?

zepposquidgin
chicosquidgin
harposquidgin
grouchosquidgin
 
The instance

How about the point of time and space converge into the instanton. It got its name because it only last for an instant. The instanton is smaller than the Planck scale and is theoretically may be every dimension compacted into the mass of a pea.

All Things Came From A Pea

It's an old theory I read of years ago. Some one may of come up with something better.
 
Of course the answer to the question is NO, or try an 'infinitely small period of time'... then half it.
 
Abdul Alhazred said:


Femto and atto I've heard of. Zepto? Are you sure that's not Zeppo?
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I had heard of Zeptoseconds. I believe the word was originally coined in order to describe laser pulse widths, as pulses were getting to the order of a picosecond or fraction there of.

I found this link and this one .

Walt
 
This strikes me as an "angels on the head of a pin" type argument. Since time is essentially a means of measuring matter in motion, the smallest unit of time would be the shortest interval in which any matter can move even an infinitesimally small distance. Reminds me of Zeno's paradox, in which he "proved" (by use of smaller and smaller units of time) that even a fast runner could never catch a turtle if the turtle had been given a head start.
 
Tez said:
Originally posted by Diogenes

This computes to approx 9.4 x 10<SUP>-16</SUP> seconds...
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Actually we can currently do about an order of magnitude better than this...
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Only one order of magnitude?

Pah.

Since the 1970s, subatomic physicists have used bombardment capture-cross-section experiments to detect extremely short-lived particles called resonance particles. These particles have average lifetimes on the order of 10<SUP>-23</SUP> seconds.
 
tracer said:

Actually we can currently do about an order of magnitude better than this...
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Only one order of magnitude?

Pah.

Since the 1970s, subatomic physicists have used bombardment capture-cross-section experiments to detect extremely short-lived particles called resonance particles. These particles have average lifetimes on the order of 10<SUP>-23</SUP> seconds. [/QUOTE]

I was talking about the accuracy of clocks we can make, NOT about the shortest timescales we infer from current experiments.
 
Re: For the record

Rocky said:
For the record:

"The second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cesium-133 atom."

Any other measure is just an aproximation (untill the second is redefined)
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Off the record.

How long does it take for 1/2 a period of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cesium-133 atom ?
 
Re: Re: For the record

Lothian said:
Off the record.

How long does it take for 1/2 a period of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cesium-133 atom ?
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That would be the time coresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cesium-133 atom divided by 2.
 
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