Hal, i guess a physicist's answer to your question would be something like that:
Question: What is Planck length? What is Planck time? Answer: The Planck length is the scale at which classical ideas about gravity and space-time cease to be valid, and quantum effects dominate. This is the quantum of length, the smallest measurement of length with any meaning. And roughly equal to 1.6 x 10-35 m or about 10-20 times the size of a proton. The Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light to across a distance equal to the Planck length. This is the quantum of time, the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning, and is equal to 10-43 seconds. No smaller division of time has any meaning. With in the framework of the laws of physics as we understand them today, we can say only that the universe came into existence when it already had an age of 10-43 seconds. Regards Ulrich > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von Hal Murray > Gesendet: Mittwoch, 29. März 2006 10:21 > An: [email protected] > Betreff: [time-nuts] Are there limits to the accuracy of clocks? > > > Daniel Kleppner's "Time Too Good To Be True" article in > Physics Today said that atomic clocks have been getting > better by a factor of 10 every decade for the past 50 years. > http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-3/p10.html > > http://www.timing-consultants.com/images/App%20notes/vol59no3p 10_11.pdf Thanks to Rob Kimberley for telling me/us about that article. It's a really neat article if anybody hasn't read it yet. Are there any known/predicted bumps in the road? Is there some physical limit? What happens after atomic clocks? ... Does anybody have a list of all the "limits" for silicon chips or magnetic recording that have come and gone? Does Heisenberg get involved? If so, how far are we from being able to notice it? How would a timekeeper state the basic idea? I'm fishing for something like "If you know the time you don't know where you are." -- The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses. These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
