What is the Planck Length, why’s it significant, and how could we even detect something that small?
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To answer the question with the simplest answer first:
>how could we even detect something so small
We can’t, it’s purely theoretical.
The Planck length is part of the Planck units, which are units derived by combining the fundamental constants of the universe. In and of itself it has no real meaning (it’s literally a bunch of things multiplied and divided to get a predetermined result) but in various proposed models it is said to be the limit below which “our understanding of physics doesn’t make sense”.
To simplify it as much as possible (i.e. very inaccurately), because this is a topic that really can’t be properly explained without prior knowledge of physics: For example, that this is the where spacetime gets “foamy” due to quantum fluctuations, and defining a smaller distance isn’t possible. Others say that it’s because this is the size of the event horizon the energy of the vacuum itself would create, and therefore even speaking of a defined length stops making sense. There are more, but they’re so technical that I can’t even understand them enough to give a gist of the meaning.
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