Scientists have discovered a way to measure molecular motion that’s so fast; it’s hard to find a real-world analogy.

As a child, did you ever play the game where a deck of cards was riffed so that at first you saw the top card, then the second card and so on…at the rate of multiple cards per second?

If you did, you were no doubt delighted (as was I) by the illusion of motion thereby created.

Movies work in exactly the same way. A professional projector can display 32 frames per second. Each image is still, yet their rapid display in succession fools the eye and the brain into believing there is movement.

Some physicists believe the whole universe actually works this way. In effect, on an incomprehensibly short time frame, everything in the universe is “born,” then exists for a blindingly fast moment, “dies” and the process is repeated again and again.

The only difference from one “frame” to another, according to this theory, is that the motion of objects is reflected by their changing position from frame one to frame two.

The theory sounds bizarre, and yet we will never be able to judge its accuracy through our senses. On the other hand, scientists have now taken a giant leap towards instruments capable of making such measurements.

BBC News reports that scientists at Imperial College have developed a way to track changes in molecular movement on an attosecond scale.

Attosecond? No, that’s not a typo, and don’t feel bad if you thought so. I’d never heard of this word either. An attosecond is one billionth of a billionth of a second.

The technique uses a special laser. Even the staggeringly fast femtosecond laser of Transformational Technologies Portfolio holding IntraLase (ILSE: NASDAQ) is one thousand times slower.

According to Dr. John Tisch, of Imperial College, the procedure fires an intense laser pulse at a molecule. This tears an electron away. The electron is pulled back into the molecule and a burst of x-rays is generated.

The laser’s effect on protons in the molecule is indicated by the x-rays. It can be determined to an interval of 100 attoseconds.

Dr. Tisch commented that if the distance from Earth to Jupiter were a second, then an attosecond would be the distance of a human hair.

This kind of profound accuracy can help scientists track molecular behavior in chemical reactions. This technological breakthrough therefore has implications for Transformational Technologies Portfolio holding Symyx (SMMX: NASDAQ).

Symyx leads the world in commercial molecular simulations.

To your profitable future,
Jonathan Kolber
March 28, 2007

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