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A picosecond is 10-12 of a second. That is one trillionth, or one millionth of one millionth of a second, or 0.000 000 000 001 seconds. The name is formed by the SI prefix pico and the SI unit second. It is abbreviated as ps.
One picosecond is equal to 1000 femtoseconds, or 1/1000 nanosecond. Because the next SI unit is 1000 times larger, measurements of 10-11 and 10-10 second are typically expressed as tens or hundreds of picoseconds. Some notable measurements in this range include:
- 1 picosecond – half-life of a bottom quark
- 2 picoseconds – switching time of the world's fastest transistor (604 GHz, as of 2005)[1]
- 3.3 picoseconds (approximately) – time taken for light to travel 1 millimeter
- 10 picoseconds after the Big Bang – electromagnetism separates from the other fundamental forces
- 108.7827757 picoseconds – transition time between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom at absolute zero
- 330 picoseconds (approximately) – the time it takes a common 3.0 GHz computer CPU to add two integers
References
- ^ Will Knight (2005-04-11). "World's fastest transistor operates at blinding speed". New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7253.
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