On 2012-01-20 15:46, Gerard Ashton wrote:
For the smallest time resolution required, we might suppose that at some point in the future there might be a need to account for transmission delay from one part of a computer to another. The smallest location that I can imagine being of interest even in a future computer is the diameter of a hydrogen atom, about 0.1 nm. The time for light to travel this distance is about 3 as, or about 2^-58 s.
Just a correction on your arithmetic: light travels at 0.3 m in 1 ns, so it takes only about 0.3 as for the distance of 0.1 nm, not 3 as. To set the scale, the finest resolution possible with the time of day register in IBM zArchitecture machines is 2^-52 µs =~ 0.2 zs, which is 3 orders of magnitude below your proposal. Michael Deckers. _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
