Kilosecond

A kilosecond (symbol: ks) is 1000 seconds (16 minutes, 40 seconds), so there are 86.4 kiloseconds in a 24 hour day, and 604.8 kiloseconds in a week. The second is the International System of Units (SI) base unit of time, which, combined with the prefix kilo- (which means 1000) results in a kilosecond. Although the metric system dictates the use of the kilosecond, it is rarely used in practice. The more common (and irregular) units of minutes (60 seconds) and hours (60 minutes) result in a conversion factor of 3600 when converting seconds to hours. The term kilosecond is most commonly found in astrophysics research articles.

A kilosecond is the longest observation of anti-atom confinement as of 14 April 2011 (2011-04-14).^[1]

Many cultural, educational, and sporting events exist in the range of 1 to 10 ks. Those include most lectures, stage plays, operas, stand-alone ballets, and in classical music most works in sonata form (the longest such work in the classical repertory is the Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler at roughly 93 minutes (5.58 ks), although some compositions in sonata form can be shorter than 1 ks in duration. The baroque concerto grosso, typically not in a sonata form, usually takes less than 1 ks to play.

An hour is 3.6 kiloseconds, the nominal time of professional basketball, hockey, and football (soccer or American football) games; although the event typically takes more time due to intermissions, time-outs, and other stoppages of the clock. The shortest full nine-inning Major League baseball game ever played took only 51 minutes (3.06 ks) to play,^[2] although the longest major-league baseball game (which took 25 innings to complete over two days) took 8 hours and 6 minutes (29.16 ks),^[3] which is longer than the standard 8-hour work day (28.8 ks) in the United States and some other countries. The standard day is 86.4 ks.

Most international non-stop flights occur in the 10-100 kilosecond range. Singapore Airlines operates the two longest scheduled non-stop flights on record: Newark to Singapore at 18 hr 50 min (67.8 ks) and Los Angeles to Singapore at 18 hr 5 min (65.1 ks).

See also

• Longer times
• For a list of half-lives in this timescale, see: List of isotopes by half-life

References