MENU

Fun & Interesting

20 Subatomic Stories: Is the Planck length really the smallest?

Fermilab 218,496 4 years ago
Video Not Working? Fix It Now

A reasonable question of physics is if there is a smallest possible size and shortest duration and some scientists have claimed that there is and they are called the Planck length and Planck time. In this episode of Subatomic Stories, Fermilab’s Dr. Don Lincoln explains the truth of the Planck constants. It’s not what you think. Don Lincoln article in Fermilab Today: “Planck length, minimal length” https://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive/archive_2013/today13-11-01_NutshellReadMore.html   Alden Mead’s 1964 paper: “Possible Connection Between Gravitation and Fundamental Length” (subscription required) https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.135.B849   Frank Wilczek’s paper on absolute units http://ctpweb.lns.mit.edu/physics_today/phystoday/Abs_limits388.pdf   Mead and Wilczek’s public conversation http://ctpweb.lns.mit.edu/physics_today/phystoday/Alden-Repsonse323.pdf Energy conservation in general relativity: John Baez http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/energy_gr.html Energy conservation in general relativity: Sean Carroll https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/ Fermilab physics 101: https://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/particle-physics-101/index.html Fermilab home page: https://fnal.gov

Comment