4 ms·
"Space is usually considered infinitely divisible — given any two positions, there is always a position halfway between." I'm unsure if this can be extended to
by fuzzmeister 16y ago
"Space is usually considered infinitely divisible — given any two positions, there is always a position halfway between."
I'm unsure if this can be extended to space, but I know that current theories state that there is a unit of time (the Planck time) that seems to be, in a sense, indivisible:
"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."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time
Could someone more knowledgeable in physics than myself elaborate on whether this fact would also mean that spacetime, and thus space, is "indivisible"?
- rorrr 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length This seems more appropriate.
- fuzzmeister 16y agoYes, but I didn't post that because of this quote, which led to my overall confusion: "The physical significance of the Planck length, if any, is not yet known."
- ionfish 16y agoAccording to general relativity, spacetime is a smooth continuum. However, due to issues arising from quantum mechanics, some have proposed that spacetime should be quantised. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_spacetime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_spacetime