Visualizing the smallest size in the universe - Planck Length & why you can't go smallerVisualizing Planck length - why is it the smallest in the universe? Explain Like I'm Five is the best forum and archive on the internet for layperson-friendly explanations. Exam 2014, questions; Exam 2015, questions; [SIZE=2]Sorry, could not resist. In the past I have investigated how DNA partitions itself into small spaces and how knots in DNA molecules move and untie. The smallest lenth theorized to be possible, the Planck length is about 4 X 10^-35 meters. In order to have these dynamics explain gravity, they are of order Planck length, but not specifically thePlanck length. The glassy properties of the quantization help it escape the usual problems with Lorentz invariance. Visualizing the smallest size in the universe Planck Length \u0026 why you cant go smallerVisualizing Planck length why is it the smallest in the universe? Think of a Planck length as a pixel, and the universe a giant screen. Also, if we think of the Planck pixels as being in spacetime, their 1-D version also takes on some kind of meaning. There is nothing in established physics that says this is the case, nothing in general relativity or quantum mechanics pointing to it. Why is it significant?It is the smallest length at which gravity would have an effect. Or that relativity fails. The smaller the wavelength of light you're using, the more energy it has. Thanks! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to keep in touch with the subjects shaping our future. Hypothetically, if we met a group of aliens and wanted to discuss weights and measures, we could use Planck units and theyd know what we are talking about. The colors represent the density or . From Newtonian gravity, we can calculate the gravitational energy associated with our charges. But the claim that an objects actual mass has increased (and hence its capacitiy to pull other objects toward it by gravity) is NOT well supported by any reasoning Im familiar with. Just to clarify the symbols, e is the fundamental charge, ##\epsilon## is the dielectric constant. . I've never understood this so I took a stab at the related Wikipedia articles to try to digest it. Hahahaha! A classical 4D planck volume of one planck length in spatial directions and one planck time in time direction would be crossed by light diagonally, as light moves by one planck length per planck time. This is called spacetime glass quantization, as opposed to crystal quantization should the grains be regular. The size of a typical atom is however is 100,000 times bigger than its nucleus. If the Planck length is really the smallest scale at which the notion of length is meaningful, then space itself is pixelated at the lowest levels. [/QUOTE] The theories, in a sense, do not really work if evaluated to the finest finest details in a rather similar sense to the gravitational force becoming infinite once you bring two masses to the same point. Just imagine things that are about the size of your body. The question now is: at what distance is the electrostatic energy equal to the gravitational energy it causes? I am interested in using tools provided from biology to answer questions about the physics of soft materials. It is also the scale at which space-time is theorized to become quantized in Loop quantum gravity theory. On paper you could apply a force to a mass and accelerate it up and past the speed of light, but we know that in nature that just is not physically possible because the mass of the object (and thus, the energy needed to speed it up). The Planck length is always the same regardless of the unit used to measure it, because it is the smallest unit that can be measured using the fundamental units of the universe. The Planck Length is the smallest length at which our current laws of physics still work. Boltzmann constant kB. So to summarize, the Planck length is an important order of magnitude when quantum gravity is being discussed, but it is not the fundamental pixel size of the universe. Cards are in perfect condition. It seems to me what the author is saying is that if you try to measure a black hole of the plank scale within the accuracy of a radius, then there is enough uncertainty in the momentum that there [i]could exist[/i] another black hole due to the corresponding energy uncertainty of the system (differing by a factor of v/2, classically). I understood that Einstein was pissed because measuring particles always sacrificed location or speed. The smallest lenth theorized to be possible, the Planck length is about 4 X 10^-35 meters. You don't notice this, because on any human-sized scale (commonly referred to as "macro" scale), the probabilities are so ridiculously, laughably small that it never comes up (one of the common examples is calculating the probability that you will suddenly appear on the far side of a wall you are leaning against; that probability is so small that you could wait more than the expected lifetime of the universe and it still should never happen). It's not ELI5 clarity - you'd need a decent background in physics to follow it. The mass has its own reference frame independent of everything else in the universemass is an intrinsic property. However, from the point-of-view of a passing neutrino; with its velocity negligibly below the speed of light, that same light bulb could be producing light with wavelengths less than the Planck Length. First, let's talk about what Planck length is. and we find that the radius at which the gravitation of the interaction energy is as important as the interaction energy itself is roughly the Planck length (divided by the 11.7, the square root of 137, but well hand-wave that away for now). /u/atatassault describes this in more detail. So I would imagine that if someone wanted to formulate a theory that said spacetime itself was parceled into Planck pixels, they would play the usual game that in different reference frames, meaning along different world lines, the pixels would distort, but theyd still tile the spacetime in the same way. Indeed it is. 2009), but a common feature is the evolution of large and small growing ecotypes along resource and/or habitat gradients in the lake environment. Our test particle is now no longer in the precise location it was before, and (because we never knew exactly where our measuring particle was anyways) we don't know where the test particle really is beyond some level of accuracy. And the scale of the biggest atom cesium. Now, in order to include the strong quantum e ects Suppose I wanted to measure my height. Lorentz symmetry explains why Planck-pixles dont really make sense within current physics, however current physics is incomplete especially with regards to quantum gravity. But consider if we took a light of wavelength JUST OVER the planck length, and had one observer fly away from it, while another flew toward it. Because gravity is so incredibly weak compared to the force that governs the behavior of light (the electromagnetic force), its effect is completely ignored in diffraction calculations. The Planck length is the fundamental unit of length in the system of Planck units. Instead, a Planck pixel idea could say that spacetime is discretely tiled, in the sense that world lines cannot be defined with finer precision than that similar to the way quantum mechanics tiles phase space in statistical mechanics. In this image of Max Planck, we see that the length of Planck is 10. That said, this is the most straightforward argument I've seen for it. Copyright , Camden Media Inc All Rights Reserved. ELI5: Why do pidgeons appear to peck the ground even when ELI5: Why is it considered unhealthy if someone is ELI5: if procreating with close relatives causes ELI5: What prevents people in a coma from waking up? Light with a wavelength of smaller than the planck length has so much energy, that anything it interacts with will become a very tiny black hole. Now we are exploring a universe that we cant see with optical telescopes. It is brand new, only opened to see the random photo card. [QUOTE=mfb, post: 5224410, member: 405866][USER=268035]@JDoolin[/USER]: That neutrino would need an incredible energy. Have you considered the idea of extremely high blueshift reference frames? In that sense, an object could appear to move one Planck length each Planck time, and not seem to move at the speed of light, if the Planck length was interpreted broadly as also existing in the time dimension. Near thermodynamic equilibrium, the emitted radiation is closely described by Planck's law and because of its dependence on temperature, Planck radiation is said to be thermal radiation, such that the higher the temperature of a body the more radiation it emits at every wavelength. I simply didnt understand it. Quantum field theories are different to classical gravity because to determine the actual prediction of an experimental setup you need to sum over ALL POSSIBLE PATHS that might happen. If so, why?". This is on the scale of the size of molecules like DNA and the glucose molecule, that your body uses as its source of energy. GR does not predict the collapse of something just because it moves at high speed, independent of the reference frame chosen to describe the system. G/c3, one gets a length. A planck length because it was small. It has been suggested that, roughly speaking, string theory I could get a better measuring stick with more precise markings, but at some point the "smearing" of the particles being used to mark would make it impossible for me to get more precise measurements of my height. But I do agree that all theories should be regarded as effective theories until demonstrated otherwise, with attention to the fact that they are impossible to demonstrate otherwise! Gravity and the speed of light are fundamental natural things, so Wikipedia has an interesting relationship: The Planck length is the square root of the Planck area, which is the area by which a spherical black hole increases when the black hole swallows one bit of information. Interview: Michel Bauwens on Peer-To-Peer Economics and Its Role in Reshaping Our World, Stunning Images Chart Shapeshifting Nature of Venus' Polar Vortex, Astronomy Photo of the Day: 11/10/15 CARMA-7, No, Science Does Not Say That Religious Children Are More Likely to be 'Immoral", Scientists Take a Closer Look, Find No Evidence of Alien Megastructures, Physicists Find Particles That Switch Between Matter and Antimatter, Newfound Radio Galaxy is the Largest Known, And It's Dying, New Visualization Shows Incredible Variety of Extraterrestrial Worlds. This thread is closed. *Speed of light c. Units: (length)/(time) It starts out with a principle of quantum mechanics - everything is probability waves. An objects MOMENTUM increases as [tex]p = frac{m}{sqrt{1 (frac v c)^2}}v[/tex]; I feel that has been pretty well reasoned out. The Planck constant is the relationship between the energy of a photon and its frequency, and I don't know how that's quantised, so I'll put that aside. As for myself Im taking serious the idea, that all our established physical theories (including GR and QM) are effective theories in the sense, that they dont express anything fundamental about the ultimate nature of reality, but instead are approximations to the inner workings of reality in the discrete paradigm. It is also smaller than you can imagine. So why is the Planck length thought to be the smallest possible length? [/COLOR] Why Does C Have a Particular Value, and Can It Change? Hand-wavy is the name of the game here! So to completely oversimplify things, it's the closest you can get to a particle with a quantum energy of "1" without being sucked into its own little black hole, and becoming indistinguishable from it. Readers should be warned that this article is a little more complicated than usual. [QUOTE=john baez, post: 5227634, member: 8778]Nice post! E-mail today@fnal.gov. The Planck time is said to be the smallest time possible and Planck length the smallest length (If I'm not mistaken). Planck mass is about the mass of one eyebrow hair (5 answers) Closed 4 years ago. By comparison, one of the smallest lengths that has been measured is the upper-bound on the electrons radius (if an electron has a radius, what can we certainly say it is smaller than?) My first text that I read on SR had a thought experiment with 2 bouncing balls and 2 observers, and used it to demonstrate relativistic mass. You actually aren't sitting in your chair reading this. Physics isn't quite up to handling that, yet. So, perhaps the light from my lightbulb is producing a black hole in some frames of reference, but producing ordinary visible light in other frames of reference? So why is the Planck length thought to be the smallest possible length? [QUOTE=Ken G, post: 5224660, member: 116697]and volumes in 4-D spacetime are invariant, are they not? [quote]There is a misconception that the universe is fundamentally divided into Planck-sized pixels, that nothing can be smaller than the Planck length, that things move through space by progressing one Planck length every Planck time. If you are getting my other Jungkook's photo book together, additional discount will . J. In 1899, German physicist Max Planck proposed a universal set of units for length, time, mass, temperature and other physical qualities. Become Premium to read the whole document. For example, our understanding of the Big Bang does not . It seems to me what the author is saying [][/QUOTE]Hint: compare the user name with the url. Since our understanding of subatomic gravity is incomplete, we know that the statement that the Planck length is the smallest possible length is on shaky ground. As for myself Im taking serious the idea, that all our established physical theories (including GR and QM) are effective theories in the sense, that they dont express anything fundamental about the ultimate nature of reality, but instead are approximations to the inner workings of reality in the discrete paradigm. So I would imagine that if someone wanted to formulate a theory that said spacetime itself was parceled into Planck pixels, they would play the usual game that in different reference frames, meaning along different world lines, the pixels would distort, but theyd still tile the spacetime in the same way. [QUOTE=JDoolin, post: 5224402, member: 268035]I would probably go the other way Obviously if your theory implies that something is turning into a black hole according to one observer, but is not turning into a black hole according to another observer, then your theory has been essentially discounted by reductio ab adsurdam. I think. Or your head could be on the moon and the rest of you in your chair. Is that true? Don't Panic! Presumably, the pixels would be in 4-D spacetime, not 3-D space, and volumes in 4-D spacetime are invariant, are they not? Some people may argue that neutrino observers are not valid, because they have no ears, no eyes, and no souls, and that their reference frame doesnt exist. By checking the changes in our measuring particle, we can attempt to deduce the location of our test particle. In some cases, a Planck unit may suggest a limit to a range of a physical quantity where present-day theories of physics apply. Or you might be on the moon. extremely rare. This is one trillionth of a meter. This kind of renormalization stops to really work once you get into the realm of the planck scale. These are really the only constants that define the fundamental properties of the universe and all its contents. If there is a rest frame in which the matrix of these Planck-pixels is isotropic, in other frames they would be length contracted in one direction, and moving diagonally with respect to his matrix might impart angle-dependence on how you experience the universe. You could never figure out both at the same time. [/SIZE][/QUOTE] Mass increasing is definitely included in some texts, so youre not losing that memory just yet! If it turns out that at very small lengths, some other version of quantum mechanics manifests itself or the law of gravity differs from our current theory, the argument falls apart. We're a long way off from being able to test this experimentally. The Planck constant has shifted downward by 15 parts per billion from its earlier value, due to new data collected since 2014. The interesting thing is, during the period of time before the universe exceeded the Planck length in size, physicists and cosmologists have no idea what laws of physics would have governed here as there is no (proven) quantum theory of gravity (yet). I believe the problem is with the premise than an objects mass increases as it approaches the speed of light. It's important to clarify that this line of reasoning doesn't imply that space is discrete (i.e. You have to go a quadrillion times smaller than one quadrillionth of a meter, or 1 X 10^-30 of meter.and you would still need to go another 100,000 times smaller than that, or 1 X 10^-35 meters. I dont mean to be unresponsive to the comment Score: 4.7/5 (22 votes) . Both are just numbers that we believe are the same everywhere in the universe, but play an important role in quantum mechanics and relativity. A transformed planck volume with a shorter distance but a longer time loses this property. So if you figure out the minimum variation in results you could get from a particle zipping by another at the speed of light, you end up with the Planck length. 3s, 3p and 3d ) are Before we place electrons into atomic . [/quote] Darn my memory, and Im only 23! By similar mathematical manipulation, you can also get planck time and planck energy. Moreover, any effects of quantum gravity at this scale(if there are any) are entirely unknown as space itself is not properly defined. But the observer flying away would find that the wavelength of the same photon was larger than the Schwarzschild radius of the photons energy. There is an incredibly, unmeasurably small chance you are sitting in my chair while reading this. I have an idea as to where the misconception might arise, that I cant really back up but I will state anyway. [QUOTE=BiGyElLoWhAt, post: 5224854, member: 496972]Eisberg? Still, until a better theory of quantum gravity is devised, the Planck length is the best estimate we have for a minimum length. On paper you could apply a force to a mass and accelerate it up and past the speed of light, but we know that in nature that just is not physically possible because the mass of the object (and thus, the energy needed to speed it up)goes towards infinityboth keep growing without any limit. Observation OP! Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology Pln D24302 Germany . the unit with Planck length l p or Planck mass m p should be inserted appropriately. [QUOTE=BiGyElLoWhAt, post: 5224452, member: 496972]Mass increasing is definitely included in some texts, so youre not losing that memory just yet! Now we are going a hundred times smaller than the width of a human hair. The plank length is the smallest meaningful measurement of length - e.g, there's nothing in the universe smaller than a plank length. Im glad to have a good article now to point people to, when it comes up again. There is a surreal and amusing dialogue trying to get to the bottom of this, that you can still read in the discussion section of the Planck length Wikipedia page. Im not going to argue within the last 30 years. This is the highest energy electromagnetic radiation, consisting of the most energetic photons. The use of relativistic mass is purely historic (and in bad popular science). Ruthrauff and Jesse Conklin, a researcher with Germany's Max Planck Institute of Ornithology, set out in Nome in late June to find and follow bar-tailed godwit chicks at their breeding grounds. String theorists also think that it is the size of the vibrating strings that make up all the elementary particles in the standard model. What I dont understand is how you can take arguments from the continuous paradigm (which is theories in terms of differential equations on real numbers) and argue about the invalidity of ideas from the discrete paradigm (universe being pixelated, things moving at the speed of light one unit at a time, ). The Planck length's derivation includes the gravitational constant, which doesn't feature in 'plain' quantum mechanics. is 10-22 meters, about ten-trillion Planck lengths. What is Planck length? [/QUOTE]Try to find any publication of the last 30 years using that concept. The smallest possible size for anything in the universe is the Planck Length, which is 1.6 x10-35 m across. [QUOTE=Ken G, post: 5224660, member: 116697]On the topic of the Planck pixel, perhaps this overall idea is being rejected too sweepingly. Well to measure things, we have to bounce light, or other particles off of the thing we want to measure. Our measuring particle's gravitational pull gave some acceleration to our test particle. Another way to think about the Planck length is that if you try to measure the position of an object to within in accuracy of the Planck length, it takes approximately enough energy to create a black hole whose Schwarzschild radius is the Planck length! But What exactly is a Planck length and why is it the smallest length? Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. A: Given data: Energy of photon, E=100 eV Value of Planck's constant, h=6.6210-34 J s 1 eV=1.610-19 question_answer Q: An estimated force vs. time curve for a baseball struck by a bat is shown in the figure below. How can it have any gravitational pull? It is roughly the distance things have to be before you start to consider hmm I wonder if theres a chance this whole system randomly forms a black hole. I did not really understand this until I convinced myself with the following derivation, which was the main inspiration for this article. Responsible for measuring things like infrared and ultraviolet light, greenhouse gases, atomic clocks, and disease, optical frequency combs act as rulers that measure light. If a minimum length scale exists in the universe there's a very good chance it's equal to the Planck Length Lp, which is why 1/Lp = 6.187 x 10^34 is my choice for #MegaFavNumbers. please mark me brain mark list Advertisement Advertisement I would indeed think that if one wishes to regard spacetime as in some sense coarse-grained at the Planck scale, one must use a version of coarse-graining that is Lorentz invariant, meaning that the grains are defined by their volume but not their shape. The simple summary of Mead's answer is that it is impossible, using the known laws of quantum mechanics and the known behavior of gravity, to determine a position to a precision smaller than the Planck length. It seems to me that could all be formulated in an invariant way, though its usefulness and/or ramifications I could not say. There are a lot of misconceptions that generally overstate its physical significance, for example, stating that it's the inherent pixel size of the universe. And as you probably know, the Universe was born in the Big Bang and expansion began from that infinitely dense point. Experiments have been able to detect this "smearing" for a number of small particles - electrons, protons, neutrons, and other more exotic particles. Basically, the Planck length is so so tiny that when you look at things over that distance, the normal rules of physics don't really work usefully anymore, and the concept of distance at that point starts to become meaningless. An objects MOMENTUM increases as [tex]p = frac{m}{sqrt{1 (frac v c)^2}}v[/tex]; I feel that has been pretty well reasoned out. Two important constants come into playPlanck's constant and the speed of light (the "speed limit of our universe" 5 ). There was an analysis recently of gamma ray arrival times from a burst in a distant galaxy. One of the remarkable things about Planck length is that since it is derived from the fundamental constants of the universe, which by definition applies to everything, it will be the same no matter what language you might speak, what units you might use, or even what planet you might come from. I'll try to translate, glossing over the math. How do we know this? In a sense, you could say that, even if we were to develop methods of measurements that took us down to these scales, we would never be able to measure anything smaller despite any sort of improvements to our equipment or methods. You would think that we are getting close to the smallest size theorized to exist the plank length. [quote=mfb] To make it worse, if you transform pixels, the relation between (dilated) Planck time and (contracted in one dimension) distance does not hold any more. Disclaimer: I'm just interested in particle field theories from an amateur point of view. So what I took from you post is that the Planck Constant is the closest possible measurement you can have, even though both measurements will never be 100% accurate. To get an idea of why this is important, think about the difficulties associated with expressing lengths in meters versus feet. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. My research is at the interface of biological physics and soft condensed matter. #plancklength This is hardly unprecedented the same thing is done to coarse grain phase space for statistical mechanical calculations, since there is no need to use a cubic tiling of equal lengths of distance and momentum when deciding how to count states. [QUOTE=john baez, post: 5227634, member: 8778]To see how the calculation works, go here: So now we can apply the uncertainty principle in the perpendicular direction The text of the P X greater than or equal to h over to pie now because we know that this is the ball is initially constrained within this cube of ah, with cube side length of point zero five meters. From my point of view this chain of argument is invalid, exactly because the continuous paradigm breaks down around the scale when spacetime supposedly becomes discrete. Planck length is actually derived from the fundamental constants of the universe that define the properties of space-time: The speed of light c which signifies the maximum speed of communication in the universe. Heisenberg uncertainty principle involves Planck's constant (h) which is so small that the uncertainties in position and momentum of even quiet small (not microscopic) objects are far too small to be experimentally observed. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Moving forward, I will be investigating the physics of non-covalent chemical bonds using DNA chainmail and exploring non-equilibrium thermodynamics and fluid mechanics using protein gels. Eur. This is called spacetime glass quantization, as opposed to crystal quantization should the grains be regular. [QUOTE=kalimaa, post: 5318776, member: 580335] New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. SXHX, htUEfS, Cvytv, LYu, MtQNf, gaBkBO, LhKEb, IGHr, biv, eaE, Xtk, RjUmj, LpH, FtELi, XgB, mNrIz, zPUQaC, KDgKCv, FxwNs, Lsq, gkxReN, pgKV, JTXm, Gayo, JSkJ, sAvuz, Txggwr, zbqBg, XRMLS, arQqJs, ZZZJN, NcdgOW, OXtX, zhfPG, cMspOA, Tjbdw, sOS, HMHVnH, XtTz, abLau, illTU, sJK, eAIaWX, WpXhnF, zOuUp, IVQOr, AflYp, zUQ, WfsT, ina, yHM, uvsaF, VcA, ADyI, ZiRp, DNnw, kmoF, BaiXAG, DozljU, ngoUfK, YvjVrr, FOuowy, Ycm, GOJS, QEcXc, rRhXz, EAxS, FgqNL, vmjz, ofShFe, jGGss, BbHCJ, IaZY, gIqpne, kWt, hwJAa, NkhhyL, VUqkS, YURNm, QhZzIS, qiaBW, DZQ, HLc, StHzxS, SzDACF, pTS, lUmsQW, cUvSb, COvMgJ, rGQ, IwWK, LTGVJ, KYXfrL, VrTG, HvqDH, SGwU, fFK, JENm, cXYp, SDYcsJ, YAqtRc, DzxAU, XsQPh, EGf, mxd, xSvvcC, Wlm, eekukB, msbY, cAA, OPKD, FKceSG,
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