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Even if space and time were continuous (which things like the Planck length would discredit), there are still discrete objects in that continuum. Elementary pa
by dlivingston 5y ago
Even if space and time were continuous (which things like the Planck length would discredit), there are still discrete objects in that continuum.
Elementary particles, for example, are discrete. You could argue that they have continuous effects vis a vis the EM field and spatial positioning, but ensemble effects usually render that irrelevant at large enough scales.
- tsimionescu 5y agoI will note that even in QM, both space and time are considered continuous - the Planck length is just a smallest measurable distance, but nothing in QM currently assumes that particles must be separated by an integer multiple of the Planck length (unlike spins, for example). I believe there are some theories of quantum gravity that do rely on the idea that space-time is quantized in integer multiples of Planck's length, but these are far from definitive theories. A much more relevant limit in terms of possible information density is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which essentially puts a limit on the maximum possible precision for any measurement.