The philosopher Zeno mathematically proved, by paradox, the quantum nature of spacetime. If Achilles races a tortoise but the tortoise gets a head start, on the assumption of a continuous spacetime, Achilles will never catch the tortoise. If there exists a minimum quantum of spacetime, they must meet someday. Obviously Achilles can outrace a f@ing turtle, thus proving - in nature - quanta and disproving the infinitesimal. Even the Human Flash must boast that he works on the level less than a f@king attosecond; he doesn't say zepto- or yocto-.
That there can be no "infinitesimal" in nature ended up retarding the seventeenth-century calculus and flummoxing nineteenth-century study of light. These fields moved forward when scientists told Zeno, Hobbes, and the Jesuits to shut up for a moment, became on the wider scale of things - like planetary orbits - we don't need a f@king attosecond. Zeno was allowed back in when Einstein figured out the photoelectric effect and got us the quantum physics.
What hasn't been done, yet, is to use that quantum of spacetime directly. This is changing. Ineffable Island has two papers up from last weekend: picosecond 3D imaging (CalTech), and holy-shakes inferring a photon crossing a hydrogen molecule: 247-zeptoseconds doi 10.1126/science.abb9318. That's 247/1000 of an atto-. The memesters tell us that 12 attoseconds is the shortest we can measure directly.
247 zeptoseconds is probably about as blinkity as the Flash goes, since as noted if he'd undercut the zepto- he'd tell us. Achilles isn't contrained yet though.
This is more than enough for a femtochemistry. I have no idea if this timespan can be shortened further.
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