• Aniki@feddit.org
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    5 hours ago

    is there any proof of it being the smallest length? i see that thrown around a lot but no proof for it. why wouldn’t there be smaller lengths?

  • treesquid@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The Planck length is the shortest measurable length, not the shortest possible length. We have no idea how we’d even go about measuring anything smaller, because we don’t understand physics smaller than that. There could be stuff that’s smaller, like even more elementary particles that build everything and determine the rules of the physics and particles that we do understand. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s the smallest anything can be and there isn’t further sub-Planck physics, or maybe it’s just turtles all the way down.

    • Aniki@feddit.org
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      5 hours ago

      uhm, so, this is just my uneducated ass talking, but i’m pretty sure that there’s no particles that make up ordinary matter below the planck length

      and i’m saying this because as you split stuff up, you kinda expect the mass of the constituent elements be smaller than the mass of the total. so if you have smaller mass, you have larger uncertainty. and i think when we talk about the “diameter” of subatomic particles, what we really mean, is the uncertainty of its wave function. and that ironically gets larger when you look at smaller particles.

  • troglodytis@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Dude set out to show it was all bullshit and figured out one of the most important pieces of the pie. Mission failed successfully

    • Björn@swg-empire.de
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      14 hours ago

      Kind of like Schrödinger who wanted to ridicule quantum mechanics interpretations with his cat in a box. And now it’s a famous analogy.

      • cynar@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        They have also experimentally tested an equivalent experiment with bacteria. They survived a trip through the double slit experiment.

        There doesn’t seem to be an issue with it, other than it’s difficult and impractical.

          • cynar@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            Anything moving has an associated wavelength. If that wavelength is long enough, you can do the young’s double slip experiment on it.

            It was a few years ago, so the details are hazy. A scientific team accelerated a particularly small and sturdy bacteria fast enough that their speed produced a viable wavelength. They then sent the stream through 2 slits. They then captured the bacteria in aerogel (I think) to slow them back down.

            Most didn’t survive, but some both survived, and ended up somewhere they couldn’t without interfering with themselves. They successfully reproduced afterwards. The debris also followed the classic ripple pattern of the experiment.

            Basically, there is nothing special about “life” when it comes to quantum mechanical effects, other than it’s on the big side.

            • wibble@reddthat.com
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              7 hours ago

              So. Something something duplicate an existing life form like a quantum photocopier? Or, what does the interference pattern of a bacteria looks like?

              • cynar@lemmy.world
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                6 hours ago

                Only 1 bacteria ever arrives. It’s the probability wave that interferes with itself.

                With the Young’s double slit experiment, if you fire a single photon, you get a single photon arriving. It looks just like how a cannon ball flies. It’s only when you let hundreds go (either collectively or individually) that the interference pattern appears.

                The end pattern is the probability that the photon (or bacteria) arrives at any given point on the receiver screen.

                • wibble@reddthat.com
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                  6 hours ago

                  But the interference pattern only turns up after multiple detections. Each detection is just a single point on a board. This means that the bacteria are identical down to the atom. Feels bigger than bacteria can be pushed through the double slit experiment?