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Orders of magnitude (time)

Comparison of a wide range of timescales

Comparison of a wide range of timescales

An order of magnitude of time is usually a decimal prefix or decimal order-of-magnitude quantity together with a base unit of time, like a microsecond or a million years. In some cases, the order of magnitude may be implied (usually 1), like a "second" or "year." In other cases, the quantity name implies the base unit, like "century." In most cases, the base unit is seconds or years.

Prefixes are not usually used with a base unit of years. Therefore, it is said "a million years" instead of "a megayear." Clock time and calendar time have duodecimal or sexagesimal orders of magnitude rather than decimal, e.g., a year is 12 months, and a minute is 60 seconds.

The smallest meaningful increment of time is Planck time the time light takes to traverse the Planck distance, many decimal orders of magnitude smaller than a second.

The largest realized amount of time, based on known scientific data, is the age of the universe, about 13.8 billion years — the time since the Big Bang as measured in the cosmic microwave background rest frame. Those amounts of time together span 60 decimal orders of magnitude. Metric prefixes are defined spanning to , 60 decimal orders of magnitude which may be used in conjunction with the metric base unit of second.

Metric units of time larger than the second are most commonly seen only in a few scientific contexts such as observational astronomy and materials science, although this depends on the author. For everyday use and most other scientific contexts, the common units of minutes, hours (3 600 s or 3.6 ks), days (86 400 s), weeks, months, and years (of which there are a number of variations) are commonly used. Weeks, months, and years are significantly variable units whose lengths depend on the choice of calendar and are often not regular even with a calendar, e.g., leap years versus regular years in the Gregorian calendar. This makes them problematic for use against a linear and regular time scale such as that defined by the SI, since it is not clear which version is being used.

Because of this, the table below does not include weeks, months, and years. Instead, the table uses the annum or astronomical Julian year (365.25 days of 86 400 seconds), denoted with the symbol a. Its definition is based on the average length of a year according to the Julian calendar, which has one leap year every four years. According to the geological science convention, this is used to form larger units of time by the application of SI prefixes to it; at least up to giga-annum or Ga, equal to 1 000 000 000 a (short scale: one billion years, long scale: one milliard years).

Less than one second

Multiple
of a
secondUnitSymbolDefinitionComparative examples & common unitsPlanck timequectosecondQuectosecondrontosecondRontosecondyoctosecondYoctosecondzeptosecondZeptosecondattosecondfemtosecondpicosecondnanosecondmicrosecondmillisecondcentiseconddecisecond
*t*Presumed to be the shortest theoretically measurable time interval
(but not necessarily the shortest *increment* of time—see quantum gravity)****: The length of one Planck time (*t* = \sqrt{\hbar G/c^5} ≈ ) is the briefest physically meaningful span of time. It is the unit of time in the natural units system known as Planck units.
qs**Quectosecond**, (*quecto-* + *second*), is one nonillionth of a second
rs**Rontosecond**, (*ronto-* + *second*), is one octillionth of a second**300 rs**: The mean lifetime of W and Z bosons
ys**Yoctosecond**, (*yocto-* + *second*), is one septillionth of a second**86 ys**: The estimated value on the half-life of isotope 5 of hydrogen (hydrogen-5)
**143 ys**: The half-life of the nitrogen-10 isotope of nitrogen
**156 ys**: The mean lifetime of a Higgs boson
zs**Zeptosecond**, (*zepto-* + *second*), is one sextillionth of one second**1.3 zs**: Smallest experimentally controlled time delay in a photon field.
**2 zs**: The representative cycle time of gamma ray radiation released in the decay of a radioactive atomic nucleus (here as 2 MeV per emitted photon)
**4 zs**: The cycle time of the zitterbewegung of an electron (\omega=2m_e c^2/\hbar)
asOne quintillionth of one second**12 as**: The best timing control of laser pulses.
**43 as**: The shortest X-ray laser pulse
**53 as**: The shortest electron laser pulse
fsOne quadrillionth of one second**1 fs**: The cycle time for ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 300 nanometres; the time it takes light to travel a distance of 0.3 micrometres (μm).
**7.58 fs**: The period of vibration of a hydrogen molecule.
**140 fs**: The time needed for electrons to have localized onto individual bromine atoms 6 Ångstrom apart after laser dissociation of Br.
**290 fs**: The lifetime of a tauon
psOne trillionth of one second**1 ps**: The mean lifetime of a bottom quark; the time needed for light to travel 0.3 millimetres (mm)
**1 ps**: The typical lifetime of a transition state one machine cycle by an IBM silicon-germanium transistor
**109 ps**: The period of the photon corresponding to the hyperfine transition of the ground state of caesium-133, and one 9,192,631,770th of one second by definition
**114.6 ps**: The time for the fastest overclocked processor to execute one machine cycle.
**696 ps**: How much more a second lasts far away from Earth's gravity due to the effects of general relativity
nsOne billionth of one second**1 ns**: The time needed to execute one machine cycle by a 1 GHz microprocessor
**1 ns**: The time light takes to travel 30 cm (11.811 in)
μsOne millionth of one second**1 μs**: The time needed to execute one machine cycle by an Intel 80186 microprocessor
**2.2 μs**: The lifetime of a muon
**4–16 μs**: The time needed to execute one machine cycle by a 1960s minicomputer
msOne thousandth of one second**1 ms**: The time for a neuron in the human brain to fire one impulse and return to rest
**4–8 ms**: The typical seek time for a computer hard disk
csOne hundredth of one second**1.6667 cs**: The period of a frame at a frame rate of 60 Hz.
**2 cs**: The cycle time for European 50 Hz AC electricity
dsOne tenth of a secondurl=https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.htmltitle=Brain Facts and Figures: Sensory Apparatus: Visionauthor=Eric H. Chudleraccess-date=10 October 2011}}

More than one second

In this table, large intervals of time surpassing one second are catalogued in order of the SI multiples of the second as well as their equivalent in common time units of minutes, hours, days, and Julian years.

Multiple of a secondUnitSymbolCommon unitsComparative examples and common unitsdecasecondhectosecondkilosecondmegasecondgigasecondterasecondpetasecondexasecondzettasecondyottasecondronnasecondquettasecond *and beyond*
dassingle seconds**6 das**: One minute (min), the time it takes a second hand to cycle around a clock face
hsminutes
*(**1 hs** = 1 min 40 s = 100 s)***2 hs** (3 min 20 s): The average length of the most popular YouTube videos as of January 2017
**5.55 hs** (9 min 12 s): The longest videos in the above study
ksminutes, hours, days
**1 ks**: The record confinement time for antimatter, specifically antihydrogen, in electrically neutral state as of 2011;
Msweeks to years
**1.6416 Ms** (19 d): The length of a month of the Baháʼí calendar
Gsdecades, centuries, millennia
Tsmillennia to geological epochs
** 3.1 Ts** (100 ka): approximate length of a glacial period of the current Quaternary glaciation epoch
Psgeological eras, history of Earth and the Universe**2 Ps**: The approximate time since the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, believed to be caused by the impact of a large asteroid into Chicxulub in modern-day Mexico. This extinction was one of the largest in Earth's history and marked the demise of most dinosaurs, with the only known exception being the ancestors of today's birds.
Esfuture cosmological time*All times of this length and beyond are currently theoretical as they surpass the elapsed lifetime of the known universe*.
Zs**3 Zs** (+100 Ta): The remaining time until the end of Stelliferous Era of the universe, under the heat death scenario for the ultimate fate of the Universe, which is the most commonly accepted model in the current scientific community. This is marked by the cooling-off of the last low-mass dwarf star to a black dwarf. After this time has elapsed, the Degenerate Era begins.
Ys**600 Ys** (): The radioactive half-life of bismuth-209 by alpha decay, one of the slowest-observed radioactive decay processes.
Rs**3.16 Rs** (): The estimated time until all stars are ejected from their galaxies or consumed by black holes.
*and onward*Qs and on**69 Qs** (): The radioactive half-life of tellurium-128, the longest known half-life of any elemental isotope.repeats itself]] arbitrarily many times due to properties of statistical mechanics, this is the time scale when it will first be somewhat similar (for a reasonable choice of "similar") to its current state again.
MultiplesUnitSymbol1 minute1 hour1 day
6×101 secondsmin
6×101 minutesh *(hr)*
2.4×101 hoursd

References

References

  1. "Planck Time {{!}} COSMOS".
  2. "WMAP- Age of the n Universe".
  3. "CODATA Value: Planck time". NIST.
  4. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. Available at: http://www.bartleby.com/61/21/Y0022100.html {{Webarchive. link. (10 March 2008 . Accessed 19 December 2007. '''note''': abbr. ys or ysec)
  5. (29 Jan 2021). "Coherent control of collective nuclear quantum states via transient magnons". [[Science Advances]].
  6. (16 Oct 2020). "Zeptosecond birth time delay in molecular photoionization". [[Science (journal).
  7. "12 attoseconds is the world record for shortest controllable time".
  8. (2017). "Streaking of 43-attosecond soft-X-ray pulses generated by a passively CEP-stable mid-infrared driver". Optics Express.
  9. (January 2023). "Attosecond field emission". Nature.
  10. (2023-02-17). "Attosecond electron pulses are claimed as shortest ever".
  11. (23 November 2010). "Visualizing electron rearrangement in space and time during the transition from a molecule to atoms". PNAS.
  12. Chiappetta, Marco. (23 September 2011). "AMD Breaks 8 GHz Overclock with Upcoming FX Processor, Sets World Record. The record has been surpassed with 8794 MHz of overclocking with AMD FX 8350". HotHardware.
  13. "Notebook".
  14. Eric H. Chudler. "Brain Facts and Figures: Sensory Apparatus: Vision".
  15. (11 March 2014). "YouTube Statistics and Your Best Video Length for Different Videos".
  16. (5 June 2011). "Confinement of antihydrogen for 1,000 seconds". Nature Physics.
  17. (2013). "In search of time the science of a curious dimension". St. Martin's Press.
  18. G. Jeffrey MacDonald [https://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm "Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?"] ''USA Today'' 27 March 2007.
  19. (1997-04-01). "A dying universe: the long-term fate and evolution of astrophysical objects". Reviews of Modern Physics.
  20. Page, Don N.. (1976-01-15). "Particle emission rates from a black hole: Massless particles from an uncharged, nonrotating hole". American Physical Society (APS).
  21. (1979). "Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe". Reviews of Modern Physics.
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