Physicists investigate the structure of time, with implications for quantum mechanics and philosophy [View all]

[Jim__]

From phys.org:

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Although in theory it may seem possible to divide time up into infinitely tiny intervals, the smallest physically meaningful interval of time is widely considered to be the Planck time, which is approximately 10^-43 seconds. This ultimate limit means that it is not possible for two events to be separated by a time smaller than this.

But now in a new paper, physicists have proposed that the shortest physically meaningful length of time may actually be several orders of magnitude longer than the Planck time. In addition, the physicists have demonstrated that the existence of such a minimum time alters the basic equations of quantum mechanics, and as quantum mechanics describes all physical systems at a very small scale, this would change the description of all quantum mechanical systems.

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Nevertheless, there is a great deal of theoretical support for the existence of the Planck time from various approaches to quantum gravity, such as string theory, loop quantum gravity, and perturbative quantum gravity. Almost all of these approaches suggest that it is not possible to measure a length shorter than the Planck length, and by extension not possible to measure a time shorter than the Planck time, since the Planck time is defined as the time it takes light to travel a single unit of the Planck length in a vacuum.

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"The physical universe is really like a movie/motion picture, in which a series of still images shown on a screen creates the illusion of moving images," Faizal said. "Thus, if this view is taken seriously, then our conscious precipitation of physical reality based on continuous motion becomes an illusion produced by a discrete underlying mathematical structure."

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