[Mumeseest]

[nerd]
Specifically, 0.000000003 seconds - which is nothing these days. Scientists can time gaps as low as 10^-18 seconds.
[/nerd]

I thought the shortest time that was ble to be measured was 10^-12..that was like 2 years ago..since when they reached 10^-18

[OlgaBorovikovva]

Well, I was generalising with that value. This is the only scale timing close to an attosecond, and even then it's still a factor of ten out: Waveform precision 50 x 10^-18s

The following are in the order of 10^-15 to 10^-16 seconds but still damn quick:
Laser pulse 250 x 10^-18s
Electron atom jump 350 x 10^-18s
X-ray pulse 650 x 10^-18s

[Mumeseest]

Yeah I beleive it was femto second 10^-12...seems that the reached that -18 now

[Pdarasenko]

Computer geeks do it till it megahertz.

OMG that needs to be on a shirt!

[gMUVgw71]

To the smallest theoretical time unit - that is the time taken for an electron to change valance states.
when i heard the claim, my response was a rather loud B*llsh*t! It's been 'broken' for years and there's at least one sub-atomic particle that doesn't exist slower than the speed of light - tachyons


http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/482

yeah but tachyons are still theoretical. as far as i know there is now way to directly or indirectly observe them