To list:
Planck time is the time that it would take a photon travelling at light speed, in a vacuum, to cross a distance of Planck's length. Since this would represent crossing the shortest possible distance at the fastest possible speed, this gives us the smallest meaningful unit of time.
The concept of a lesser Planck time has been explored and scientists working in the atomic clock field think they can create a model which would be diminutive of the classical "planck time." The universe, is speculated to have come into existence with an age of 5.39 x 10-44 That's a mighty quick creation, but still does not confirm nor validate the "big bang" theory. Thank God!
James S.
Subject:
Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS Re: Einstein and Langevin
From:
joseph Aisenberg <vanveen13@sbcglobal.net> <mailto:vanveen13@sbcglobal.net>
Date:
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:57:39 -0700 (PDT)
To:
Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Before outstaying my welcome, this Planck Time, being the theoretically smallest measurable interval, presents us with the QUANTUM view of time as DISCONTINUOUS. Stan Kelly-Bootle.
J.A.: My Layman's mind, along with Friedman's help, thinks it may have understood about a third of what you discussed. Over the years I've plunked through several books about quantum physics because friends of mind insisted that it verified the possibility of magic and other stuff that of course turned out not to be the case, but I did get stuck on this time issue. When you say time can be discontinuous, obviously this must have to do with something other than what I will call real clock time (I recall reading about particles going backwards or forwards or something, meaning that time had been trumped or whatever), since its continuity, the sensation of passage, is really based on perceptual memory and if it became discontinous then time would be meaningless. Time is only a measuring device we use with our memories to correlate changes in space. People like myself who understand little or no science often get the idea that The Time Travelers are coming! from our shallow exposure to the Quantum revolution.
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JA: I feel your pain! Here's a quick Quantum fix that might work for Nabokovians. The particular sense organs & brains we HomSaps possess (whether gifted by some very gifted Creator[ess] or via a long-convoluted Darwinian/Dawkensian/Dickensian evolution, need not detain us here) give us a particular view of the world reasonably well-suited and scaled for our everyday survival. By scale, I mean our natural unaided ability to distinguish objects, locations and movements within an "appropriate" size and time range. Other successful species see, smell and explore the world with their own particular senses and size-time-scales. Nabokovians can, I suggest, more readily than most, imagine the vastly different world-views of mice, men and E Coli arising from having these widely different sensory acuities. Yet all these world-views are valid unto themselves, reflecting different aspects of what we loosely call an under-pinning "reality."
Stan Kelly-Bootle
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