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Florida Researchers Create Shortest Light Pulse Ever Recorded
SchrodingerZ writes "Researchers at the University of Central Florida have created the shortest laser pulse ever recorded, lasting only 67 attoseconds. An attosecond is a mere quintillionith of a single second (1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000). The record-breaking project was run by UCF Professor Zenghu Chang, using an extreme ultraviolet laser pulse. '"Dr. Chang's success in making ever-shorter light pulses helps open a new door to a previously hidden world, where we can watch electrons move in atoms and molecules, and follow chemical reactions as they take place," said Michael Johnson, the dean of the UCF College of Sciences and a physicist.' Its hoped that these short laser blasts will pave the way to better understand quantum mechanics in ways we have never before witnessed. In 2008 the previous record was set at 80 attoseconds, the pulse created at the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Germany."
...some attempt to measure Asian weiners.
Wolfram Alpha?? You must know that that c is 3e8 m/s already. Surely multiplying by 67e-18 s is not that hard without google.
You can even do it in your head if you can't find a calculator. 67 attoseconds is 67e-18. Add the exponents of that and 3e8, -18 and 8 and you get an exponent of -10. Multiply the mantissas 3 and 67; well 67 is about two thirds of a hundred, times the 3 of 3e8 so it's 200. Include the exponent and it's 200e-10, or 20e-9, i.e 20 nanometres. Done