If space is infinitely divisible, nothing can be measured accurately as there is no accurate measurement to give – the decimals keep rolling. — MikeL
If space is infinitely divisible, nothing can be measured accurately as there is no accurate measurement to give – the decimals keep rolling. — MikeL
Is the quantum level really as far as it goes? That's not very far at all when you think about it. We are only a couple of levels above it. — MikeL
Surely the decimals in the measurement don't close out. Surely no two electrons are the same. — MikeL
any radiating body would radiate an infinite amount of heat (there being no smallest contribution if the underlying reality doing the radiating were continuous). — apokrisis
every electron - has been checked out to a greater number of decimal places than any other scientific fact. — apokrisis
And we happen to be 35 orders of magnitude distant from the Planck (distance) scale. That is 1 followed by 35 zeroes. — apokrisis
Yeah, but we are already using microscopes that exploit quantum effects. That didn't take us long to dig down to the lowest layer. — MikeL
So let me ask, how do they know that a radiating body actually does stop radiating heat? — MikeL
So is seeing believing or not? You can't have it both ways. Either we see the graininess and believe it, or we do what you do and still seek to deny it. — apokrisis
So let me ask, how do they know that a radiating body actually does stop radiating heat?
— MikeL
Just turn on your light. Did it vaporise the planet with an instant blast of infinite heat? — apokrisis
And all bodies indeed radiate some heat as they will have some relative temperature. — apokrisis
Small problem. Nature turns out to be quantum. There is a fixed fundamental grain of action and dimension. So spacetime and energy are discrete and not continuous at the bottom-most scale of things. — apokrisis
Thanks for your input SophistiCat. I do understand the importance of using a standard unit to obtain consistent measurements — MikeL
Small problem. Nature turns out to be quantum. There is a fixed fundamental grain of action and dimension. So spacetime and energy are discrete and not continuous at the bottom-most scale of things. — apokrisis
Although space is continuous and infinitely divisible in quantum physics, and any spacial interval can be expressed there without a problem, the theory undermines the idea of the world consisting of sharp-edged objects with definite sizes. — SophistiCat
There are some speculative developments that seek to quantize spacetime at the fundamental level, — SophistiCat
The idea of interminable decimals which is what we appear to have feeds back into the assertion of a continuous universe. — MikeL
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