As short as an attosecond…Wednesday, July 11th, 2012 by Roberto
Saracco Imagine a billionth of a second, well it is pretty
difficult. Let’s say that a billionth of a second is as far to a
second as one second is far from 33 years (in 33 years you have
a billion of seconds). In a billionth of a second a light beam
will move just 33cm! And light is pretty fast. Now take that
billionth of a second and divide it by one billion. What you
have is an “attosecond”, a billionth of a billionth of a second.
In that attosecond a light beam will travel a distance of 3
angstrom, that is a distance 3 atoms long! Well, this is
actually the feat achieved by researchers at the Imperial
College in London! They managed to generate a laser pulse for an
attosecond and they expect this can help other scientists in
getting a better understanding of some nature processes, like
photosyntheses. To imagine why it would be so think at those
pictures showing a bullet that is going through an apple. You
have surely see those pictures, just