Fastest stopwatch in the world - Friday, 27 February 2004 Imagine a stopwatch that can measure a millionth of a millionth of a millionth, of a second (Image: Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development) A new ultrafast stopwatch can now measure the speed of atomic processes down to the smallest fraction of a second yet. Austro-Hungarian physicist Professor Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics near Munich, Germany and colleagues report their research in this week's issue of the journal Nature. Krausz describes the device as "the fastest stopwatch in the world", capable of measuring the...