Nanosecond

A nanosecond is one billionth of a second. It is far too short to do anything in, and is therefore the only unit of time in which nobody has ever been late.^[1]

In one nanosecond, light travels about 30 centimetres, roughly the length of a ruler. Physicists find this useful; rulers find it humbling.

Booking a nanosecond

Because a nanosecond is so short, a meeting scheduled to last one must be planned well in advance. The minutes of the first such meeting, held in 1971, ran to 40 pages and recorded that the meeting had ended before the chair finished saying “Right then.”^[2]

In everyday use

People often say “I’ll be there in a nanosecond.” Studies show the average arrival time after saying this is 14 minutes, or 840,000,000,000 nanoseconds, making it the most overstated unit in common use, ahead of the jiffy.^[3]

History

For most of history the nanosecond was not needed, as nothing happened quickly enough to require one. It became useful with electronic computers, which do things in nanoseconds and then wait several seconds for the person in front of them to decide what to do next.

See also

• Second – a billion of them, end to end
• Jiffy – the runner-up
• Minute – 60 billion nanoseconds, roughly

References

1. Tick, T. (1971). Minutes of a Very Short Meeting. 40 pp.
2. Blink, B. (2008). I’ll Be There in a Nanosecond. Late Press. Published 14 minutes after the stated date.
3. Quick, Q. (n.d.). Brief.