Viviator

Okay, so I get that I misunderstood the meaning of the planck units. But then, what is quantum mechanics saying?

So, it's basically more a limit to our understanding of the world, rather than an actual physical limit? Is that correct? This again would only make a difference if the unmeasurabillity of time is the result of our lack of knowledge/technology opposed to the physical nature of time just being unmeasurable at that scale. (that's how I previously understood it, that no single measurement of timespans smaller than planck time could have any meaning, regardless of the accuracy of measuring equipment etc.) So, do you also say that it's just a gap of our working knowledge and understanding pf physics? Thanks

Thanks for replying. I considered absorption for this, and it makes a lot of sense, but I thought that reflection without absorption would also be possible in theory? But I guess then, that this is not the case? So just to see if I understand, suppose you have 2 nearly identical mirrors, where one is thinner then the other. (And they are both just a few atoms thick) the thicker mirror would reflect more of the light? Since some light might pass through the mirror not getting absorbed, and thus not reflected. Could you please elaborate on this? What do you mean when you say necessary? As in, we use one theory over the other at certain scales because that helps us explain what is going on, or a more fundamental change in what is going on at different scales. I've read up on planck energy, and I can understand how this couples in with general relativity, however, I still not understand how this would explain planck time as being something different from what I've described. Also, if quantum mechanics is saying something different about planck units, then why do I so often see this explanation? For example, this comes straight from wikipedia: One Planck time is the time it would take a photon traveling at the speed of light to cross a distance equal to one Planck length. Theoretically, this is the smallest time measurement that will ever be possible,[3] roughly 10−43 seconds. Within the framework of the laws of physics as we understand them today, for times less than one Planck time apart, we can neither measure nor detect any change. I'm I missing some subtleties? Or is this view simply wrong? Just trying to understand. Thanks for the reply.

Lack of understanding (of pretty much everything) I hold the optmistic belief that the more you understand something, the better you would conduct your actions (assuming there is such a thing as 'good' and it's not just the result of people hanging opinions on (historical) events. So, education all the way!

I chose happy for these reasons: Intelligence, is in my opinion a culmination of various things, working together to give the impression of that what we call intelligence, and to try and 'be intelligent' therefore becomes a statement of less meaning. In the way that describing when something is a house is less accurate when it's the culmination of bricks and wood forming together to become a house. You could perfectly map out the exact locations of each brick and tile, but another configuration could just as well be a house. This is also my view of intelligence. It is possible to describe it, but not possible to define it. Not only that, but it's also relative. Untill there is such a thing as an objective measure of truth or wisdom, any measure of intelligence can only be done by expressing it in another. This for me adds to the loss of meaning of 'being intelligent'. You could argue, that this would also apply for happiness. And you would be right. However, there is one major difference in my opnion. Happiness, is much more a choice, over intelligence. A personal choice, which does not need outside meaning to matter for this personal question. And that's why I choose happiness.

Hello all. This is my first post here, so I hope I don't do anything wrong. I would have posted this in a general 'quick question' forum if there was one, but I figured this would be a good place to ask. So, I've been trying to understand this for a long time, but so far, no one has been able to sufficiently explain it to me. My question comes down to this. Since quantum theory tells us, there is a smallest significant distance; the planck distance, and thus a smallest possible significant time (The time it would take to move over a distance of 1 planck distance going with the speed of light.) how would 'change' then be possible? What I mean by that is, that as I understand it now, when a shorter time passes then the planck time, nothing can possibly have changed right? So, you can imagine it like still frames of 1 planck time 'width'. But when you put all those frames side by side you would have one from where everything stays the same, then, directly following that, is the next frame, where again, nothing can change, and so forth. But when we experience the real world we see change and motion all around us. So there is a paradox. I'm guessing I'm misunderstanding the basic concepts here, since that's what happens with most paradoxes, but if not, my other alternative explanations were: 1, Maybe the uncertainty principle makes it possible for something to happen, since the event happening or not is not at a certain point in time, but rather smeared out having probaballistic properties? 2 Maybe, the change occurs instantaneously in between the frames essentially making time grainy and pixel like? (Which would not affect our macro observations) I really hope someone can explain this to me. Also on a related question. If massless particles always travel with the speed of light, how does a photon get reflected then? Since at one instant, it travels with lightspeed in the positive direction, and an instant later it would travel with light speed in the negative direction. Or,... there would be a moment in between where it's speed would be 0? Very confusing to me. Please let me know. Thanks