Don Moss wrote: >On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 Ulrich Bangert wrote: > > > >>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 >> >> > >Ulrich, > >I'm a little "uncertain" how to interpret this. Does that mean that time >and distance (length) are granular rather than continuous? So there are >only discrete moments, and time doesn't flow smoothly; it jumps from one >instant to the next, and the instants are separated by the Planck time? >Put another way, if the instants of time were represented on a number >line, the points would not cover the line, but would be separated by the >Planck time. And all meaningful time intervals are integral multiples of >the Planck time. And the universe could be said to jump from one state >to the next, much as it would in a computer simulation with an ultrafine >granularity. And analgous statements could be made for length. > >Is this the right idea, or is that not the way to look at it? > > - Don > > The way I understood the explanation is that the "instruments" used to measure length or time were unusable at the Planck time etc.
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