Why can’t we get smaller than the plank length?
In: Physics
We can’t get anywhere close to planck length with our current technology.
Googling says that the smallest distance that we have measured is 10^(−18) m. Planck length is 10^(⁻35) m.
But this has nothing to do with “planck length being the smallest possible distance”. Planck length is not the smallest possible distance. It doesn’t really have any real physical meaning behind it.
There is a bit of problem with our theories not working at such scale (the equations resolve to nonsense) but the problem is that we don’t have theory for quantum gravity yet. Not some fundamental meaning of planck length.
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So what is planck length then?
Planck length is one of the planck units. They were made to be used to make math easier.
In SI units speed of light is 299792458 m/s. Big number.
In planck units speed of light is 1 planck length/planck time. When doing calculations “1” is one of the easiest numbers to have!
Many other common numbers of physics also reduce to “1” in planck units. Wikipedia lists some of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units
Additionally the planck units are defined straight from physical constants making them more universal.
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