Yoctonewton Detector Smashes Force Sensing Record

KentuckyFC writes "A team of physicists has measured the smallest force ever recorded, at 174 yoctonewtons (yocto=10^-24), beating the previous best by three orders of magnitude. Their measurement device consists of a few dozen beryllium ions trapped in magnetic and electric fields using a device called a Penning trap. These ions vibrate at between a few mega and kilohertz, frequencies that can be accurately measured by bouncing laser light off the ions and measuring any Doppler shift they cause. Being charged, the ions are highly susceptible to the tiny forces associated with stray magnetic and electric fields, which change the frequency at which the ions vibrate. Hence the super-sensitive measurements. They team says that straightforward modifications should allow them to measure single yoctonewtons in the near future. This sudden leap in sensitivity could cause a problem for the system of SI prefixes, which don't yet come any smaller than yocto."

Comments

Look at last fiew SI prefixes

[ATestR]

zepto
yocto

Seems like the logical next steps would be prefixes starting with x, then w, etc. So:

xocto
wupto
vecto
etc.

I doubt that the measurement of forces will go that many more orders of magnitude beyond where they're already measuring things.

Re:Huh?

[wisnoskij]

And a quick look at SI prefix history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix#List_of_SI_prefixes) will show you that they have been slowly expanding that table anyways (as it was needed most likely).

beyond yocto

[migloo]

Logically, 10^-27 would be called xennea
The recurrence is:
zepta (Z + hepta=7)
yocto (Y + okto=8)
xennea(X + ennea=9)

Re:Computer science is, as always, superior.

[ciroknight]

Depends on what we're talking about. Probably Planck units is about the best we can do, so starting with ~10^-100-ish would be a good first guess.

Re:It's 10E-24

[bughunter]

Umm.... that would be equal to one.