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Juliehansen Juliehansen
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12 years ago
Is it the same as a Planck length?  Is there also an indivisible unit of time?  How would such units affect cosmology?  Thank you.
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rkearl27rkearl27
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12 years ago
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wrote...
12 years ago
Planck's length is the shortest unit of length in a given space/time reference.

Planck's time is the shortest unit of time in a given space/time reference.

Such quantization affect cosmology in a huge way. The notion of quantized space/time taken together with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are fundamentally behind what makes it possible for our universe to emerge in a big bang. The explanation of this is probably too long to go into here, but there are many texts out there that deal with this notion. Check out Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" for instance.
wrote...
12 years ago
If one subscribes to quantum theory, yes.

The indivisible unit of time we can attribute to good ol' Max Planck, ten to the negative forty-third second.

The units themselves do not affect cosmology but the implications of quantum theory affect cosmology by denying the existence of an infinitely small Primordial Particle with an infinite temperature.
wrote...
12 years ago
Ideally, I guess one can look at it that way. Theoretically, there is no such thing as a shortest distance - in terms of eternity. Similarly, there is no indivisible unit of time, since time and space are interwoven: if that were the case, everything would be absolutely independent of, and purely unique, to everything else.
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