Attosecond

Holonyms: femtosecond < picosecond < nanosecond < microsecond < millisecond < centisecond < decisecond < second < decasecond < minute < hectosecond < kilosecond < hour < day < week < megasecond < fortnight < month < year < gigasecond < century < kiloannum, kiloyear, millennium < terasecond < mega-annum, megayear < petasecond < giga-annum, gigayear < exasecond < zettasecond < yottasecond < ronnasecond < quettasecond

Meronyms: quectosecond < rontosecond < yoctosecond < zeptosecond

I can think at the speed of light, I can perceive events that last for less than an attosecond, I can run faster than time. What do I see when I run across the country, Superman? I see everything. And everyone.

The observation and manipulation of electron dynamics in matter call for attosecond light pulses, routinely available from high-order harmonic generation driven by few-femtosecond lasers.

Given the scales on which technology has operated in the first quarter of the 21st century, from lasers that flash for just a few attoseconds to the total amount of digital data in the world pushing past 160 zettabytes, it feels as if we may have let things lie for too long. I don't know if the future will have quettabit computer networks or rontometer-scale wormholes, but I'm pretty sure the large and small of it will be hella weird.

We humans are so stuck in the middle of the cosmic scales — in average height, one-hundredth of one-septillionth (10^-24) the size of the observable universe, and with typical life spans of a couple octillion attoseconds. And an attosecond is an eternity compared with the lifetime of the elusive Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that exists for one-thousandth of an attosecond before decaying.