Planck scale

No fatal flaws, uh, zeros nearly across the board.

One point though for un- uh, unidentified dark matter and dark energy, and, uh, for admitted breakdown at the Planck scale, and, uh, the more substantial penalties, two points each, which, uh, weighted come to six on exactly the two things it declines to explain, uh, the fine-tuned start and the fine-tuned constants.

All right? So total of 14.

Hmm.

What is that? Basically, there's a couple versions of it, but I'm going to use the Avengers version because it's more fun.

Essentially, you can shrink down to where you're measured on the Planck scale, and then you can use quantum tunneling to enter into a different timeline, which is what they did in the movie.

Shrink down to quantum size and then pop out in 2012 so they can get the time stone or whatever.

I think that's really cool because you're implying that if you can shrink down to the quantum level, that time no longer applies to you.

You can't calculate anything at all.

The theory breaks down entirely, and this mathematical disaster reaches its absolute peak at a specific threshold called the Planck scale.

The Planck scale, this is sort of the basement of reality, right?

It is the absolute floor.

We're talking about 10 to the power of negative 35 meters.

Yeah.

Let's say we just ignore the math.

Let's say we have unlimited funding, and we build a machine like a godlike microscope designed to physically isolate and measure a localized zero-dimensional point at that Planck scale.

But you could imagine designing some experiment to zoom down and down, down on scale to see if there is any pixelization there.

And there's something that we call the Planck scale, which is sort of like a, a fundamental scale limit in our reality.

But could that be the grid that we're built upon, or is that just the, the mathematical scale of, of our universe? And there, you know, there's, there's other examples of potential computational artifacts.

So for example, Einstein's theory of general relativity tells us...

In fact, it's a disaster.

It leads to several problems, but I'll focus on the one that wrongly predicts these crazy fluctuations on the Planck scale.

In general relativity, the presence of mass or energy warps the gravitational field.

There can be no exceptions.

We say that a quantized space time of general relativity is non-renormalizable.

The non-renormalizability of quantized general relativity is connected to the idea that precisely localized particles produce black holes.

Space and time simply cannot behave in the familiar way below the Planck scale.

And so the simplest approach to quantizing gravity and space time must be wrong.

Okay, recap.

We have these Planck scale one-dimensional structures that can be in loops or extended.

They have vibrational modes that define particle properties.

I ended up missing about 50% of the votes in the Iowa legislature this year.

It solves one of the main problems with quantizing gravity.

Maybe you remember from our episode on quantum gravity If you try to describe gravitational interactions on the smaller scales, the energies required to interact on that scale produce black holes.

There's no way to even think about the shape of the gravitational field on the Planck scale that doesn't produce a hopeless conflict.

String theory fixes this because the graviton is a loop, not a point particle.

But zoom in close enough and you hit the quantum realm.

At the Planck scale, about 10 to the negative 35 meters, space-time itself should be quantum.

It should fluctuate, foam, exist in superposition.

Try to write the equations for quantum gravity.

Plus, it makes almost no testable predictions.

Loop quantum gravity takes the opposite approach.

It says spacetime itself is quantized, not smooth and continuous, but made of discrete loops at the Planck scale.

It's more conservative, doesn't require extra dimensions, but can't easily incorporate the other forces of nature.

And so now we can draw like the logical mechanics of, oh, this is like how time must actually function logically for conservation to exist.

And so that would really mean that we have to take that understanding of a block and we have to map that onto the smallest unit of time that physics permits, which is when you get to the quantum level is the Planck scale.

And so it's like.

Can I just ask, like from your reference, like has Plank Scale ever popped up in conversation?

No, and today I had to go check what Planck scale is, and now I think I know.

It's like the boundary, right?

It's where our classical and quantum theories kind of intersect or break down.

They break down at that moment.