How is the “Plank Length” the absolute limit of how small something can be?
In: Physics
the planck length is the absolute limit of how small something can be and still be detectable.
when you get to Quantum phenomena (aka when you go REAL small), things dont behave in a “classic” manner. everything in this world has both a “wave” side and a “particle” side. for stuff like you, your chair, your food, etc, that wavepart is so small that it’s essentially “not there” because it has no effect on anything.
but when you get to smaller and smaller stuff, that wave-part becomes (relatively) bigger and more important. and when you try to plot the speed or position of something it is no longer a “point” or “pillar” in your graph, but this “washed out area” and what makes quantum physics so weird is that that’s not because you dont know where the object is but because the object is in all of that area to varying degrees at the same time as long as you dont look too closely.
and you “looking closely” means you interact with that thing you’re looking at and influence it. and if you try to look so closely that you can pinpoint its position to something close to the planck length then you’d need so much energy that the thing you’re looking at is accelerated to lightspeed. and at that point all – even theoretical – attempts to be more precise break down
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