Saturday, March 9, 2013

5.4 x 10^-44

The smallest physically meaningful unit of time is one Planck time, or the time required for light to travel one Planck length. It is about 5.4 x 10^-44 seconds.

One Plank length is the distance light travels in one Plank time.  It is about 1.616 x 10^−35 meters.  

This was all set up by Max Planck.



3 comments:

  1. What puzzles me is this. Suppose a particle starts at point A, goes west for one Planck unit, then north for one Planck unit. How far is it from its starting point? Or is that one of theose weird things where the micro world doesn't follow the same rules as the macro world?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I assume it would be approximately 1.4142 Planks from where it started.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Which doesn't make sense if distances have to be integral multiples of Planck units.

      Delete