[quote]jjblaze wrote:
If you’re bored at work and want to watch a great quantum movie and bend your mind a little, pop in a dvd of “What the bleep do we know?” Great flic.[/quote]
And pretty much debunked by everyone! Even some associated with it!
Nothing in time and space exists independently. Meditate on that the next time you go on a physics kick.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
So I’m not high or anything, but I am incredibly bored at work here at 3am, so I started thinking about some crazy shit just to pass the time.
I started wondering what it means to have a “speed limit” on our universe, which as everyone knows is the speed of light, or about 3 x 10^8 meters per second.
If there is such a thing as the fastest speed, then there MUST also be such a thing as the smallest time, right? Since in the rate equation of speed being defined as distance travelled per unit time which is
speed = distance / time
The time cannot be infinitely small or zero since that would lead to an infinite speed, and there is no such thing. How would I go about finding what is the “smallest time”?
Well, since we know the fastest speed, all we have to do is travel that speed across the smallest distance and that will be the answer. So how do I figure out the “smallest distance”?
Enter the Planck length, or 1.616 x 10^-35 meters. At this distance, the physical properties of the universe fail. How nice! A bunch of scientific dudes already figured it out for me.
So, plugging stuff into the rate equation, the smallest time is about:
5.38 x 10^-44 seconds.
So what does it mean to have a smallest unit of time? [/quote]
I don’t know. But someone at Atari obviously figured it out about 25 years ago. How else can you explain PacMan’s ability to exit on the left of the screen and appear on the right, while moving in the same direction he exited on the left just an instant before.
Clearly, there is a wrinkle or tear in the space-time continuum that allows this.
DB
[quote]PGJ wrote:
I thought this whole universe was just a molecule in the fingernail of some giant being.
Knowing that, imagine how many microscopic universes may exist in our own bodies. I bet those creatures that exist there can measure distances much smaller than we can imagine.[/quote]
Dude, you beat me to it.
I used to call that my “microaliens” theory. That we are microscopic aliens to beings of a different dimension (that is, too a large for our nervous systems to register) just as we are populated by infinite levels of microaliens of smaller dimensions (being too small for our nervous systems to register).
Because, no matter how fine the instrument of measurement, it must still be “gritty” or “fine” enough to deal with our nervous systems which are of a certain size and a certain sensitivity.
Just don’t ever tell that to a “scientist” though. I’ve had it a couple times where they throw a hissy fit and start making personal attacks, typically starting with, “You can’t just…” Usually this is done so while waving their degrees in my face and in the face of any such logical deduction beyond their “true believer” faith in instrumentation, and blind faith in the other technicians who came before them.
I make the distinction between scientist and technician, as scientist is the rarer breed, who starts from an intuition then proves with an experiment. Like Newton, or Einstein.
A technician is one who starts with the experiments of another person, conducts their own experiments within the confines of existing proof, and then attempts to extend their new proof beyond its capabilities; such as, extending the results of events within the realm of human experience to the universe outside the realm of human experience!
This is the wrong way.
Bottom line: Most people who think they are scientists are actually technicians, because they don’t start from the place of truth. They start instead from the place of proof. We can go from truth to proof, but not from proof to truth. Truth is too big for proof.
That’s why Columbo is successful with a “how catch 'em” while the others are a “who done it”. He knows who the killers are, but only needs to gather enough evidence that a court will believe. Meanwhile, the hapless Sergeants under his command fall for every red herring that the killer planted, and go chasing the phantom lead!
And Columbo even has a shabby, Einstein air to him. I rest my case 
[quote]Kailash wrote:
I used to call that my “microaliens” theory. That we are microscopic aliens to beings of a different dimension (that is, too a large for our nervous systems to register) just as we are populated by infinite levels of microaliens of smaller dimensions (being too small for our nervous systems to register).[/quote]
Since there’s no way of registering those smaller/larger alien beings, then there’s no way to tell if they’re actually there or not. Correct me if I’m wrong.
If there’s no way of detecting the presence of those smaller/larger beings at all, why suppose that they exist? Why invent undetectable entities that have no interaction with this universe? What benefit does it bring? Is it simply because the concept of infinite regression towards smaller and smaller / larger and larger universes is somehow pleasing to you?
I ain’t no scientist either, but wouldn’t this be where Quantum Physics struggles, since “quantum” means having a quantity or having the ability to be measured? With distance and time, no matter how miniscule the distance between two points, there always exists an infinite amount of smaller units of distance or time between those two points.
Distance and time are fluid, on a continuum. Therefore, the smallest unit is immeasurable. Someone could always come up with a smaller unit than the current smallest unit.
Kind of like the largest number. There is a googol (1 followed by a hundred zeroes), a centillion (1 followed by six hundred zeroes), then a googolplex (1 followed by a googol zeroes).
Still, there is Moser’s number and Graham’s number. I could just say I founded the largest number and define it as a googleplex raised to the googleplex power and make up a name for it. Then someone else could do the same.
I bet a real physicist would laugh at how elementary I sound right now.
[quote]bretc wrote:
I ain’t no scientist either, but wouldn’t this be where Quantum Physics struggles, since “quantum” means having a quantity or having the ability to be measured? With distance and time, no matter how miniscule the distance between two points, there always exists an infinite amount of smaller units of distance or time between those two points.[/quote]
Actually, “quantum” refers to quanta, or the smallest quantity of something previously thought to be continuous.
That’s the whole thing with quantum physics: at some point, you can’t keep subdividing. You get a smallest amount of light (photon), a shortest lenght (the planck lenght) the shortest time (planck time), etc. While it is mathematically possible to imagine smaller lenghts/time/energy values, those have no meaning in the physical reality in which we live.
You cannot have less light than one photon. And you cannot emit 1.5 photons of light; it’s 1 or 2 or any other integer value, no in-betweens.
When that theory was evolving, many scientist thought that quantum theory was a “mistake”, a convenient way to explain observed phenomas that couldn’t be reconciled with continuous theories; but further work has pretty much convinced everyone that the universe really is quantified and that you do reach a point where keeping on dividing is not possible.
Einstein was quite convinced that quantum theory was “not right”; he spent much of his later years trying to disprove it. Many of the thought experiments he devised back then could not be experimentally tested before his death. Since then, all the experiments he suggested to disprove quantum theory that have been done have instead supported it.
Ironically, he won his Nobel prize for his work on the photo-electric effect; one of the first experiments showing the quantum nature of light.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
I’m not a rocket scientist, so I am just throwing this on the wall.
But wouldn’t the smallest unit of time be the time it took one photon to move one photon-length?
Isn’t a photon the particle that moves at the speed of light?
Like I said - just throwing it up against the wall. [/quote]
Well, the thing is that photons don’t really have a size, like a particle, say, a proton does. We can describe electromagnetic energy by the way it acts as a wave and the way that it propogates. If we look at a wave of light which is in the nanometers range, this is incredibly huge compared to a Planck length. I guess we could get away with saying that photons come in varying sizes, but even that is stretching it a bit.
Bottom line here is that the photon isn’t something we can use to define a distance in the way that we can say “oh look, there’s a baseball diamond which is always 90 feet per side.” What we can say is “oh look, there’s a wave of light passing through a vacuum which always travels at 3 x 10^8 meters per second.”
If that makes any sense.
But what if there was the slightest of error in the measuring of the speed of light?
Wouldn’t that drastically change what the outcome could be?
We may have just been unable to truly measure it.
Also, there have been other errors in Math that just don’t add up (no pun intended), and usually a rule is made in those cases, so the formula for the speed of light might not necessarily prove there is a “smallest time”.
It’s still interesting anyway. I just don’t think we can rule out any and all possible measuring errors, especially with such enormous, or tiny numbers.
[quote]bretc wrote:
I ain’t no scientist either, but wouldn’t this be where Quantum Physics struggles, since “quantum” means having a quantity or having the ability to be measured? With distance and time, no matter how miniscule the distance between two points, there always exists an infinite amount of smaller units of distance or time between those two points.
[/quote]
Let me help you.
There are mathematically an infinity of points along a line segment, because mathematics isn’t bound by reality. For example, I can just write this speed on a piece of paper:
One billion light years per second.
And that can make sense to us and we can perform mathematical equations and whatnot with it in the way that we can imagine any distance per any unit time. The thing is, that speed of one billion light years per second doesn’t “exist” in the way that it can actually be travelled by anything. In the context of reality, it is a nonsense rate of speed. It’s… pretend… I guess is the way we can describe it.
Similarly, as I explained in my first post, the actual makeup of the physical realm is bound by a smallest unit of distance that can exist, and also a smallest unit of time that can exist. I can write a number like 5.7 x 10^-345 seconds, but in the context of reality, this is a nonsense amount of time because the universe doesn’t happen in chunks of time that small. We can write a distance like 7.9 x 10-5589 meters, but there isn’t anything that small in reality. Don’t take my word for it, look it up. There’s guys wayyy smarter than all of us put together who have figured this out like a hundred years ago.
I know this is counterintuitive, but go back and read my first post again. Common sense tells us that since speed cannot be infinitely large, by definition, time cannot be infinitely small. Just basic “not dividing by zero” there.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Actually, “quantum” refers to quanta, or the smallest quantity of something previously thought to be continuous.
That’s the whole thing with quantum physics: at some point, you can’t keep subdividing. You get a smallest amount of light (photon), a shortest lenght (the planck lenght) the shortest time (planck time), etc. While it is mathematically possible to imagine smaller lenghts/time/energy values, those have no meaning in the physical reality in which we live.
You cannot have less light than one photon. And you cannot emit 1.5 photons of light; it’s 1 or 2 or any other integer value, no in-betweens.
When that theory was evolving, many scientist thought that quantum theory was a “mistake”, a convenient way to explain observed phenomas that couldn’t be reconciled with continuous theories; but further work has pretty much convinced everyone that the universe really is quantified and that you do reach a point where keeping on dividing is not possible.
Einstein was quite convinced that quantum theory was “not right”; he spent much of his later years trying to disprove it. Many of the thought experiments he devised back then could not be experimentally tested before his death. Since then, all the experiments he suggested to disprove quantum theory that have been done have instead supported it.
Ironically, he won his Nobel prize for his work on the photo-electric effect; one of the first experiments showing the quantum nature of light.[/quote]
Awesome, pookie. You post the same kind of stuff while I was writing mine. But I think your post does a better job of explaining… plus bonus points for getting Einstein in there.
Ok kids, here comes the disgruntled physics graduate student…
First of all, the Planck time has nothing to do with the speed of light directly. It really has to do with reconciling gravity with quantum field theory. The fundamental “Planck” quantity is the Planck energy, which is the energy at which quantum field theory breaks down becuase gravity starts to have a non-negligible effect. A complete description of quantum gravity would be required, which we don’t have right now.
The reason this is an interesting quantity is becuase it really is a maximum energy that a photon can have, because if it had any more, it would create a particle massive enough to become a black hole. Therefore, bye-bye photon, and no observations can be made.
Using the uncertainty principle, you can derive the Planck scale, or Planck length, which corresponds to the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole of the Planck mass.
I think everyone also needs to be reminded that physics is a mathematical description of reality, and any non-mathematical speculation, while useful from a pedagagical or philosophical perspective, is not scientifically valid.
P.S. I just checked out the Wikipedia entry for the Planck scale, and it’s pretty good. Take a look.
For anyone reading this thread looking for a practical application of any of this info, here it is:
From this day forward Planck Squats are the name of the exercise where the person loads the bar up with way too much weight than they can properly full squat and then proceeds to unlock/relock the knees and count that as a full-rep.
How to use it in a sentence, “This bozo at the gym loads four plates on each side, does a set of Planck squats and then struts off like a bad ass. What a tool.”
[quote]SWR-1240 wrote:
But what if there was the slightest of error in the measuring of the speed of light?
Wouldn’t that drastically change what the outcome could be?
[/quote]
Hah, I bet pookie is writing something like I’m about to and posts it before me, but anyway…
To answer your valid point:
There have been so many different experiments which have been performed to determine the speed of light that it just isn’t happening that everybody got it wrong. We’ve even used the moon landing, a mirror, and a laser fired from earth to confirm it.
We have become exceedingly precise in getting down to this number:
299,792,458 meters per second.
In fact, the meter itself is defined by the speed of light.
Still not convinced? Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) like radio waves propogates at the same speed as the speed of light, which is what lead early physicists to conclude that the stuff travelling by radio waves and the stuff we see as light are one and the same thing.
Cool, huh?
I remember reading some string theory shit where there’s a duality between the distance r for r > planck length and 1/r for r < planck length. That is, when you try to shrink past the planck length you essentially bounce off of it. If the universe does have critical mass and collapse into itself, it’ll hit the planck length and start to “grow” again insofar as 1/r becomes the same as r had been. Apparently there is no way for us to tell whether we’re in distance or reciprocal distance, because measurements remain the same.
[quote]Dr. Ryan wrote:
For anyone reading this thread looking for a practical application of any of this info, here it is:
From this day forward Planck Squats are the name of the exercise where the person loads the bar up with way too much weight than they can properly full squat and then proceeds to unlock/relock the knees and count that as a full-rep.
How to use it in a sentence, “This bozo at the gym loads four plates on each side, does a set of Planck squats and then struts off like a bad ass. What a tool.”
[/quote]
Nice…
[quote]swordthrower wrote:
Ok kids, here comes the disgruntled physics graduate student…
First of all, the Planck time has nothing to do with the speed of light directly. It really has to do with reconciling gravity with quantum field theory. The fundamental “Planck” quantity is the Planck energy, which is the energy at which quantum field theory breaks down becuase gravity starts to have a non-negligible effect. A complete description of quantum gravity would be required, which we don’t have right now.
The reason this is an interesting quantity is becuase it really is a maximum energy that a photon can have, because if it had any more, it would create a particle massive enough to become a black hole. Therefore, bye-bye photon, and no observations can be made.
Using the uncertainty principle, you can derive the Planck scale, or Planck length, which corresponds to the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole of the Planck mass.
I think everyone also needs to be reminded that physics is a mathematical description of reality, and any non-mathematical speculation, while useful from a pedagagical or philosophical perspective, is not scientifically valid.
P.S. I just checked out the Wikipedia entry for the Planck scale, and it’s pretty good. Take a look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_scale[/quote]
Okay, hearing you. But what about my assertion that there is such a thing as the smallest unit of time? Isn’t the fact that there is such a thing as a “fastest speed” indicative of this?
Or is my caffeine buzz just making me even more full of shit than I normally am?
[quote]swordthrower wrote:
Dr. Ryan wrote:
For anyone reading this thread looking for a practical application of any of this info, here it is:
From this day forward Planck Squats are the name of the exercise where the person loads the bar up with way too much weight than they can properly full squat and then proceeds to unlock/relock the knees and count that as a full-rep.
How to use it in a sentence, “This bozo at the gym loads four plates on each side, does a set of Planck squats and then struts off like a bad ass. What a tool.”
Nice…[/quote]
Seconded. “Planck squats” has a nice ring to it. Does it count if it’s in a Smith Machine?
Acually, pookie has to put in a few units of Planck Work now and then.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
I know this is counterintuitive, but go back and read my first post again. Common sense tells us that since speed cannot be infinitely large, by definition, time cannot be infinitely small. Just basic “not dividing by zero” there. :)[/quote]
Isn’t this a non-sequitir? You assert that mathematics can perform outside the bounds of physics. Must physics be bounded by mathematics? Just because math can’t deal with something divided by nothing doesn’t (necessarily) mean physics can’t do it. Pi is theoretically irrational and mathematically incalculable, but every circle in the universe contains pi. Math has yet to generate a truly random equation or an univertible function, but physics (thanks to time) does it in a myriad of ways every second of every day.
What I really want to know is if we’re a great big movie, when is intermission?