Scientists measure the shortest interval of time ever recorded

Team Udayavani, Oct 23, 2020, 5:00 PM IST

Atomic physicists at Goethe University Frankfurt, the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin and DESY have measured that it takes 247 ‘zeptoseconds’ for a photon to travel across a hydrogen molecule.

It is  the shortest time span that has been successfully measured to date. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second.

In order to measure this event, scientists irradiated a hydrogen molecule using  X-rays from the PETRA III laser, the most powerful light source of its kind.

According to Nbc news, The findings are the culmination of global efforts to measure shorter and shorter time spans in physics, and they offer scientists a way to precisely measure atomic changes through what’s known as the photoelectric effect.