[ExI] Instantaneous?

John K Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Mon Jan 5 22:36:37 UTC 2009


In the current issue of the journal Science an experimental measurement of
the time it takes for an electron to tunnel through a barrier was made.
Theory predicted it should take somewhere between 500 and 600 attoseconds
depending on the breaks. An attosecond is a billionth of billionth of a
second; an attosecond is to a regular second as a second is to the age of
the universe.

The odd thing is that when an experimental measurement was actually made it
was found that the time for that electron to tunnel through that barrier was
less than 12 attoseconds, how much less nobody knows as that is the limit of
the experiment's accuracy.

I don't know quite what to make of that and I find I'm not alone in my
puzzlement. It's weird.

 John K Clark





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