A picosecond is a standard unit of measuring time. It is equal to 10⁻¹² of a second. It is one trillionth, or one millionth of one millionth of a second, or 0.000000000001 seconds.

One picosecond contains 1000 femtoseconds. There are 1000 picoseconds in one nanosecond.

Notation

• 10^-10 seconds is 100 picoseconds.
• 10^-9 seconds is 1 nanosecond.

Examples

• One picosecond is the half-life of a bottom quark.
• Ten picoseconds after the Big Bang, electromagnetism became its own force.
• It takes light about 3.3 picoseconds to travel one millimeter.
• It takes a common 3.0-gigahertz computer 3.3 × 100 picoseconds to add two integers together.

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