Exploring "Attosecond" Time

Visualising an Attosecond...

How short is an attosecond?

Here is one way to think about it: If you were driving a rocket that moved at the speed of the electron bound to a hydrogen atom, then you would travel the circumference of the earth just over one second and the circumference of the atom in just over 100 attoseconds. In other words 100 attoseconds is to a second as the size of an atom is to the size of the earth.

Here is a second way think about it: One attosecond is to 1 second as one second is to the age of the universe. Actually, an attosecond is just a little bit shorter even than this. Imagine how different our universe is compared to the universe when it was born. The world of attoseconds is equally different from our world.