Pbs how long is a string

That's a point followed by 32 zeros and then a 1. It's a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter. Physicists stick to metric. Or think of it this way: if an atom were magnified to the size of the solar system, a string would be the size of a tree.

Yup, real small. In this feature, we try to give you a vague sense—for that is all that's possible—of just how small a string is. Starting at an everyday scale, we travel by powers of down into the shadowy world of strings. The strings of string theory are unimaginably small. Your average string, if it exists, is about 10 centimeters long. That's a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter. If an atom were magnified to the size of the solar system, a string would be the size of a tree.

In this feature, we try to give you a vague sense—for that is all that's possible—of just how infinitesimally tiny a string is. Starting at an everyday scale, we travel by powers of down into a string's shadowy world.

You'll have to forgive us for taking a kind of visual poetic licence in imagining what the world looks like smaller than a quark.