from seconds to attoseconds
In the microscopic world of electrons and light oscillations – attoworld for short – motion is speeded up so immensely that the respective time unit (1 attosecond = 0.000 000 000 000 000 001 second, (10^{-18}) seconds, see wordinfo and wikipedia
) makes the period of a heart beat (~1 second) appear to be stretched beyond the age of the universe (~5x10^{17} seconds). This is evident from the time scale in Fig.1. This scale also reveals that the switching of electric current in computer chips
occurs at a snail’s pace with respect to the rapidity of oscillation of an electron inside an atom and that of the emitted light: electrons within or between atoms can perform a million periods of their motion during the time it takes a computer chip to switch on and off current for a mathematical operation.
) makes the period of a heart beat (~1 second) appear to be stretched beyond the age of the universe (~5x10^{17} seconds). This is evident from the time scale in Fig.1. This scale also reveals that the switching of electric current in computer chips occurs at a snail’s pace with respect to the rapidity of oscillation of an electron inside an atom and that of the emitted light: electrons within or between atoms can perform a million periods of their motion during the time it takes a computer chip to switch on and off current for a mathematical operation. (here the electron of a hydrogen atom following excitation to the 1S-2P superposition state), in slow-motion replay, as in Fig.2. One of the main mission of attosecond physics is to make the atomic-scale motion of electrons observable in real time, as demonstrated by this example.
further reading
Some reports about the attosecond-dimension:
Fig. 1. The dimension of an attosecond. (© thn)
Fig. 2. "The intra-atomic motion of electrons has to be slowed down more than quadrillion (million times billion) times to make it discernible to the human eye.