Instant

In physics and the philosophy of science, instant refers to an infinitesimal interval in time, whose passage is instantaneous. In ordinary speech, an instant has been defined as "a point or very short space of time," a notion deriving from its etymological source, the Latin verb instare, from in- + stare ('to stand'), meaning 'to stand upon or near.'[1]

The continuous nature of time and its infinite divisibility was addressed by Aristotle in his Physics, where he wrote on Zeno's paradoxes. The philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell was still seeking to define the exact nature of an instant thousands of years later.[2]

In physics, a theoretical lower-bound unit of time called the Planck time has been proposed, that being the time required for light to travel a distance of 1 Planck length.[3] The Planck time is theorized to be the smallest time measurement that will ever be possible,[4] roughly 10−43 seconds. Within the framework of the laws of physics as they are understood today, for times less than one Planck time apart, one can neither measure nor detect any change. It is therefore physically impossible, with current technology, to determine if any action exists that causes a reaction in "an instant", rather than a reaction occurring after an interval of time too short to observe or measure.

As of November 2016, the smallest time interval uncertainty in direct measurements is on the order of 850 zeptoseconds (850 × 10−21 seconds).[5]

See also

References
  1. Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th ed. (1999), p. 740.
  2. W. Newton-Smith (1984), "The Russellian construction of instants", The structure of time, Routledge, p. 129, ISBN 978-0-7102-0389-2
  3. "Big Bang models back to Planck time". Georgia State University. 19 June 2005.
  4. "Planck Time". COSMOS - The SAO Encyclopedia of Astronomy. Swinburne University.
  5. "Scientists have measured the smallest fragment of time ever". 2010-05-12. Retrieved 2012-04-19.


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