Michael Lewis, author of the book Flash Boys, tried to describe a Picosecond in a recent podcast I was listening to from The Motley Fool stable. This was to give context to the realities of decision making involved in high frequency trading. It was as clear as mud to me, having listened to this a few times now.
As Michael Lewis understands it; "I am told that the blink of an eye takes anything between a hundred and two hundred milliseconds. There's a thousand micro seconds in a millisecond, a thousand nanoseconds in a microsecond and a thousand picoseconds in a microsecond..." Clear as daylight or clear as mud? If you are still wondering what that means in seconds, there's a thousand milliseconds in a second. So a Picosecond is one trillionth of one second!
If you read this far, I am sure you must be left wondering, like I am, that what is the point of measuring that? Why did we go down as far as measuring picoseconds and can we really measure that moment in time, or is it just intelligent sounding theories that are not practical?
Enjoy the podcast
http://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=33454996&refid=asa
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