Temporal resolution (TR) refers to the precision of a measurement with respect to time. Often there is a tradeoff between temporal resolution of a measurement and its spatial resolution. In some contexts such as particle physics, this trade-off can be attributed to the finite speed of light and the fact that it takes a certain period of time for the photons carrying information to reach the observer. In this time, the system might have undergone changes itself. Thus, the longer the light has to travel the lower is the temporal resolution.
This reasoning is subject to contention however, challenged by the teaser posed in the first few chapters of Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time. Using the Newton concept, gravitational effects do not seem to be subject to this time delay. The discovery of gravitational waves could, however, throw more light on this concept.
In another context, there is often a tradeoff between temporal resolution and computer storage. A transducer may be able to record data every millisecond, but available storage may not allow this, and in the case of 4D PET imaging the resolution may be limited to several minutes.
In some applications, temporal resolution may instead be expressed through its inverse, the refresh rate, or update frequency in Hertz, of a TV, for example.
Famous quotes containing the words temporal and/or resolution:
“Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce great poetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“[A]s I am pretty well acquainted by great Opportunities with the Nature of Man, and know of a Truth, that all Men fight against their Will, the Danger vanishes, and Resolution rises upon this Subject. For this Reason I shall talk very freely on a Custom which all Men wish exploded, tho’ no Man has Courage enough to resist it.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)