[time-nuts] Are there limits to the accuracy of clocks?

[Don Moss]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Bill Janssen wrote:

> Don Moss wrote:
>
> >Ulrich,
> >
> >I'm a little "uncertain" how to interpret this.  Does that mean that time
> >and distance (length) are granular rather than continuous?  So there are
> >only discrete moments, and time doesn't flow smoothly; it jumps from one
> >instant to the next, and the instants are separated by the Planck time?
> >Put another way, if the instants of time were represented on a number
> >line, the points would not cover the line, but would be separated by the
> >Planck time.  And all meaningful time intervals are integral multiples of
> >the Planck time.  And the universe could be said to jump from one state
> >to the next, much as it would in a computer simulation with an ultrafine
> >granularity.  And analgous statements could be made for length.
> >
> >Is this the right idea, or is that not the way to look at it?
> >
> >	- Don
> >
> >
> The way I understood the explanation is that the "instruments" used to
> measure length or time
> were unusable at the Planck time etc.
>
> Bill K7NOM

So the Planck length is the smallest MEASURABLE length, and not the
smallest length which can exist.  I was wondering how a proton (or
anything) could be smaller than that.

If that's true then that's different from the way energy is quantized
(which I understand is the idea that got quantum mechanical theory
started in the first place).  Energy only exists in "quanta", or
discrete-sized packets (or something like that).  So in the case of
energy it's not a measurment issue, but the idea that energy actually
exists only in certain specific amounts; it comes in indivisible
clumps.

	- Don


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