femtobarn
Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- noun A unit of area equal to a billionth of a millionth (10^-15) of a barn; 10^-39 square centimeters.
Examples
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"One night I had a nuclear physicist in the audience, and I did this account of what a femtobarn was, and at the end he gave me the thumbs up."
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By next year, collisions will be occurring -- if all continues to go well -- at a rate producing what physicists call one "inverse femtobarn", best described as a colossal amount, of information for analysts to ponder.
Note
The word 'femtobarn' comes from 'femto-', the SI unit for 10^-15, and 'barn'. The physicists M. G. Holloway and C. P. Parke decided to use 'barn' as the unit for measuring the size of an atomic nucleus of uranium in 1942.
