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Non-locality and Planck time

  1. Nov 9, 2005 #1
    How does instantanious action at a distance reconcile itself with Planck Time and the assumption that nothing can happen in this minuscule timescale? Does the transition from cause to effect not have a Planck time after the cause and before the effect?
    Could one describe a unit of Planck Time as being 'the present' and one must wait for the future for anything to happen?

    Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but one can only learn.
  2. jcsd
  3. Nov 10, 2005 #2
    I guess is was a silly question?
  4. Nov 14, 2005 #3
    I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. Do you understand what the Planck time is?
    It's the smallest amount of time (quanta of time) that is meaningful. Measuring times shorter than that are meaningless.

    On a second look, I have a vague idea of what you mean. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're asking if instantaneous action at a distance will happen within a unit of Planck time.

    Instantaneous action at a distance concerns tangled particles interacting. You must treat them mathematically as one system. So I think that if you interact with one of the particles, it's as if you're interacting with the other at the exact same time.
    So, my guess is that it doesn't really concern the Planck time.
  5. Nov 14, 2005 #4
    Right. It's not as if the interaction with particle A happens first, then causes particle B to react. It's instantaneous. No time passes inbetween.

    And you're incorrect in saying that "nothing can happen in" a single unit of Planck time. On the contrary, a single unit is the smallest length of time in which something CAN happen. It's how long it takes for the shortest event imaginable to take place.
  6. Nov 14, 2005 #5


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    So does this mean time is continious not quantized?
  7. Nov 14, 2005 #6
    I agree, because Plancks time is the time it takes a photon traveling at the speed of light to cross a distance equal to the planck length, therefore if the particles are really far apart, say across the universe it would still take time for the transaction to happen. Therefore it's either instantaneous or not. Am I correct in saying that?
  8. Nov 15, 2005 #7
    I forgot about light travelling a planck-length! But do all other actions have to wait a planck-time to happen above the quantum realm?

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