Science of a Second

The old definition of a second was based on the rotation of the Earth. As it takes the Sun one day to rise in the east, set in the west and rise again, a day was almost arbitrarily divided into 24 hours, the hour into 60 minutes, and the minute into 60 seconds. However, the Earth doesn’t rotate uniformly. In fact, it’s rotation decreases at a rate of about 20 millionths of a second every calendar year due to tidal friction caused by the Moon. Atomic time relies on the energy transition w...

 Dimensions of an Atomic Size Computer

If we somehow manage to make an atomic size computer, it would mean that the dimension, the linear dimension, is a thousand to ten thousand times smaller than those very tiny chips that we have now. It means that the volume of the computer is 100 billionth or 10^-11 of the present volume, because the volume of the "transistor" is smaller by a factor of 10^-11 than the transistors we make today. The energy requirements for a single switch is also about eleven orders of magnitude smaller than t...