[Ultima (OP)]

I don’t know if this has been asked before but is there a minimum instance of time for something to happen in? It just seems strange that everything appears to be quanta-sized except for time… If time is treated as a dimension… why isn’t it quanta-sized also like the plank length? I have no idea about QM but it always appeared odd to me that time tends to just be continuous and used in physics to represent change in something??? Or is time more of something humans perceive but has no actual realisation within any framework of the universe? I was reading how a lot of how we perceive time... such as it "moving forward" is to help our brain deal with increasingly complex changing events such as catching a butterfly or something, but may hold no real insight as to the nature of time...

wOw the world spins?

[Observer101]

How about the TIME required to go plank length at V=c?

Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations? (- George Carlin)

[gsmollin]

Here is a link that develops Planck length, time, mass, temperature, and density.

http://www.fact-index.com/n/na/natural_units.html

[Ultima (OP)]

Thanks for the link

wOw the world spins?

[Ylide]

Quick, someone derive the formula for the Planck mole.



This message brought to you by The Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People

[tweener]

quote:Originally posted by Ylide

Quick, someone derive the formula for the Planck mole.



This message brought to you by The Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People

Is that the smallest mole living in my back yard eating the rose roots?

----
John - The Eternal Pessimist.

[qpan]

Hmm- it strikes me that the Planck mass is actually pretty large, at least compared with the others.
Planck mass = 0.000021 grams.
Compared with the rest (which are all 10^-35 ish), that is quite a significant size!

"I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it."
-Edgar Allan Poe

[Observer101]

This should confuse things a bit...

http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~rovelli/rovelli.html [nofollow]

Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations? (- George Carlin)

[Mr. Scientist]

The Planck Time may i add which is something like 10^-44 which a particle can make a quantum action under, MUST also occur in an equally infinitesimal space called the Planck Space which is 10^-33.

[DoctorBeaver]

Hmm- it strikes me that the Planck mass is actually pretty large, at least compared with the others.
Planck mass = 0.000021 grams.
Compared with the rest (which are all 10^-35 ish), that is quite a significant size!

"I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it."
-Edgar Allan Poe

And there you have it - the hierarchy problem!

[Mr. Scientist]

I have a theory, that the hierarchy problem is merely a universe undergoing the most simplest structures which to us seem complex at best. We have limited means therego, of our ability to reduce such complex systems to simple understanding, so maybe the complexity of the universe is in fact ourselves reflecting our inabilities to describe it fully.

[DoctorBeaver]

I have a theory, that the hierarchy problem is merely a universe undergoing the most simplest structures which to us seem complex at best. We have limited means therego, of our ability to reduce such complex systems to simple understanding, so maybe the complexity of the universe is in fact ourselves reflecting our inabilities to describe it fully.

I think I agree with you. I have often wondered if our theories are over-complicated and that there is something basic that we have not got quite right that would make everything a lot simpler.

[LeeE]

I have a theory, that the hierarchy problem is merely a universe undergoing the most simplest structures which to us seem complex at best. We have limited means therego, of our ability to reduce such complex systems to simple understanding, so maybe the complexity of the universe is in fact ourselves reflecting our inabilities to describe it fully.

I think I agree with you. I have often wondered if our theories are over-complicated and that there is something basic that we have not got quite right that would make everything a lot simpler.

Same here too.

[yor_on]

Time is a flow?
Forget about 'Planck time'

Time is events?
Hola Planck:)

http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/What%20is%20Time.htm

[Mr. Scientist]

Time is however, not really a flow at all. Only psychologically can it have a flow. Outside of psychology of the mind, time is fast instants of flashes and stops.

[LeeE]

Time is however, not really a flow at all. Only psychologically can it have a flow. Outside of psychology of the mind, time is fast instants of flashes and stops.

Weeell...  that's debatable.  Either: we could occupy just a point in time, or we could occupy a region in time.  Relativity is happy with occupying a point but QM doesn't like zeros and would favour a region.  I would agree though, that if we occupy a point in time then our movement through it would be in discrete steps, and what is more, at a constant apparent speed within that time-frame, equivalent to 'c'.

[Mr. Scientist]

Time is however, not really a flow at all. Only psychologically can it have a flow. Outside of psychology of the mind, time is fast instants of flashes and stops.

Weeell...  that's debatable.  Either: we could occupy just a point in time, or we could occupy a region in time.  Relativity is happy with occupying a point but QM doesn't like zeros and would favour a region.  I would agree though, that if we occupy a point in time then our movement through it would be in discrete steps, and what is more, at a constant apparent speed within that time-frame, equivalent to 'c'.

Well, you more or less answered this yourself. Do you know how?

[LeeE]

Logically, any object that has zero length in the direction that it is traveling in can only move in discrete steps because any movement away from it's original location must be greater than zero.  Regardless of how small the distance is, it must, even if infinitely small, be > 0 for it to have moved at all.  Conversely, an object with non-zero length can move while occupying, for a period of time, the same point in space.  It really comes down to how precisely you can locate something; the entirety of a zero length object can be located by a single precise coordinate but the entirety an object with length cannot because it occupies a region.  Now you could choose to pick a particular datum point along the length of the object, and work with that, but that would not describe the entire object.

[yor_on]

That would be correct if considered an expression by our other three dimensions (in time:)

But time itself?
It seems to me that you can see 'time' as a 'field' if you like, like gravity, like space?
And what would this way of looking do to 'distance' and 'motion'?

At times 'shrunk', as when looking at spacetime from being at rest with the frame of an accelerating object.
But seen like I describe it still a field, experienced as a 'flow' when described from any frame of reference.
And never 'uniform' except when you're 'at rest' with what you're comparing too.
Always a 'relation'.

Yep, now I'm deep )
I do need to go to bed...

And that's what we do, isn't it:)
Ah, not go to bed, even if we do..

But 'observing' from inside 'reference frames'?
We do have an 'arrow of time' though.
And that's mighty confusing, and interesting.

[DoctorBeaver]

Logically, any object that has zero length in the direction that it is traveling in can only move in discrete steps because any movement away from it's original location must be greater than zero.

That's the sort of thing I hate about physics - zeros (and infinities). My little brain can't wrap itself around something having zero length.