The Planck Length: The resolution of the Universe?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- What’s the smallest thing that you can imagine? Depending on how good your imagination is, you might be able to imagine pretty small, but can you imagine Planck length small? Well let’s find out.
Based on some of the fundamental constants in the universe, the Planck length is astonishingly small. In this video we will try to imagine how tiny this is by comparing it to some other small things.
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The Planck length is easy to imagine. It's the distance you need to move shower controls to get from from freezing to scalding
You need new taps....
This is a universal truth!
Now that puts it in terms I can understand. Brilliant!
Relatable
Your water heater is set way too high if that's a thing
The Humam egg comparison size with the entire measurable universe to that of a Plank length to a human egg really puts it into the absolutley scale perspective. Nicely done. Mind blow.
I know it does!
Jup that really puts it to scale. My brain is smoking but yeah i can imagine it now.
@@thorinsee5129 In reality, none of us can even come close to imagining how vast the observable universe is, but we can be stunned that it is a large scale. Even if we’ll never truly grasp its size.
Human egg???
Kinda backs up the simulation theory if you think about it.
Wait this means that humans, in all our cosmic insignificance, are closer in size to the largest thing (that we could ever observe anyway) than the smallest. Just... woah. From the perspective of a hypothetical Plank-being, a human body would seem even more impossibly vast than entire universe does to us! This is why I love this stuff.
We are the only knowing thing which think about how our universe is. We are not insignificant.
@@seveng0th well we can't know for sure if that's true. Also, it's BECAUSE we are conscious that we even care about things like that In the first place.
Not on a linear scale
@@TheEroticDonkey yeah but the higher is lower than the lower is lower
Makes me think about cosmic rescaling like Penrose talks about. Just instantaneously everything that was the size of mitochondria is now the size of the moon, and it all starts over.
Has TH-cam been shadow banning this guy? He’s freakin’ amazing. Love this stuff
Thank you very much. I'm sure TH-cam isn't shadow banning me at all. I'm just not very good at self promotion, and my job means I don't get chance to make as many videos as I'd like.
@@LearningCurveScience yeah, we need “sponsors.” Pity that some are good at raising sponsors, but produce mediocre content. Then there are guys like you who produce great content, but raising sponsors “ain’t” your thing
No. It’s just that most people are idiots and would rather watch kids playing computer games than learn something. 🤦♂️
@@mattsheldon9732 ha ha…couldn’t have said it better
Your assertion of shadow banning requires some proof even as a hypothetical: the algorithm simply doesn’t shadow ban.
Excellent work, as always. I've never seen the Planck length - egg cell - observable universe comparison before. Simply mind-blowing! Thanks for uploading these superb videos.
George Howard
Great analogy of the human egg cell smallest size visable to the observable universe for Planck scale. :-)
@@ghhoward That's right! because any universe smaller than the human egg is not a universe anymore! because that's the smallest that a universe can possibly get! Universe*plank length=human egg.
@@findystonerush9339 wait what?
This is actually how science videos shall be made. You use the things people are familiar with and compare them in size to exmplain how something is small or big. Thanks a lot! Keep up with a good work.
Let them eat cake! He touched on some important points, but did not elaborate in order to satisfy lesser minds. Let them follow the Kardashians!
This is not science. I suppose it could be viewed as a very juvenile introduction but it's at a 4th grade level. Have we sank that low?
@@fredjones7705 *sunk
@@alexanderzerka8477 See what I mean?
The Midlands (UK) accent is a key component for the "perfect" science video too ofc
That last example of the human egg scale suddenly made it very clear, Amazing!
clear ?..for me not really : it s like switching from one illusion to another .. look at the video on yuotube by trying to tag " how is the universe far bigger than you think". then you get how uncomprehensible large is already the observable universe ( not to mention the whole universe) . At this scale it s a fallacy to pretend to scope numbers that big ( like the size of the universe, plank lenght). then trying to explain one with the other is ... another fallacy ?!
@@didierleonard7125 true but it's still better than having no reference. Also plenty of people know that the observable universe is about 30-40 billion light years in radius.
years ago i was told to add the smallest pencil dot i could manage on to a sheet of paper, then imagine that dot was increased to the size of the observable universe in which someone would be adding a new tiny pencil dot - with that second dot being a good estimation of planck length. The egg cell scenario is very similar but sounds way more scientific.
Thank you for this, it was a great visualization and definitely helped.
I love how you saved the best comparison scale for the last. Couldn't have put it any better. Kudos!
Here's another scale: the Planck length - man - is about 100 million observable universes.
That last comparison between the universe, the egg cell, and the Planck length was really illustrative.
finally, science videos that are (a) actually fun to watch and (b) don't require a degree in the topic to understand. great job!
Very nice scale explanation at the end there. It really made me understand how tiny the Planck length actually is. What a great example. I will remember this one when trying to explain science to my friends and family.
FINALLY! This got up into the hundreds of thousands of views (& counting). It's taken a while for this channel and its great content to catch on, but I'm glad that many of its videos are finally getting their well deserved views and this channel getting into the many thousands of subscribers now, too. 💁
Thank you so much for your continued support. Every one of my subscribers is important to me.
This video isso amazing. The channel deserves more subscribers and hopefully will grow♡
Thank you very much. Honestly I just enjoy making the videos and the opportunity I get to do some research of some cool science, I'm glad you enjoyed it too.
@@LearningCurveScience I do not only enjoy it - I love it! Keep it up 👍
It's happening, very slowly, but finally both views and subscribers are at least into the thousands now.
"things are starting to get strange here" hehe I see what you did there.
you do a really good job of explaining this and in giving weight to how truly small a Planck length is.
Thank you for pointing out that you don't ACTUALLY GET SHORTER when moving faster, you just APPEAR SHORTER to an outside observer!
Yes! if you where at light speed! an observer would see you the size of a planck length!
Weird coincidence that the human scale is almost exactly in the middle of the largest and smallest scales we can speak of with any meaning.
we are always at the center of something.... However, history has shown us again and again that we are not. That makes you wonder...
Very well done. Short and to the point, easy to follow, easy to understand, no deep diving into complex math equations.
That said, I'll unwillingly be forgetting most of this stuff after my short term memory of it fades away and I'll be back to describing it "ridiculously super duper uber small". :P
Eggcellent vid!!! The scales literally fell into my eyes as opposed to from them - thanks for a great bit of science 👍
The beauty of the Planck length is that it allows more space for particles ,as yet undiscovered yet, to exist
Freaking great! I can’t believe how small this length is
........and just.....how small is it?!
@@larryslemp9698 The planck length is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 metres! and that is how small it is!
There is an ERROR on the screen at 4:50, where the values and units are given for the fundamental constants as well as the formula to calculate Planck's length using them.
Planck's constant's unit is [m^2*kg*s^-1] and *not* as given [m^2*kg^-1*s^-2].
If we tried to calculate the length with these units, we would get something like [m*kg^-1*s^(-1/2)]...
If we use the correct unit for Planck's constant, all the units nicely reduce to [m].
I watch a lot of educational videos on math and the universe, not particularly Learning Curve 2b honest, and occasionally produce my own. So we should all be careful about the data and formulas we provide.
Yes! i did not see that ERROR! :(
@@findystonerush9339 it's ok little buddy 😊
I knew that...
Such a small error🙄
@@tuneboyz5634 Why? LOL.
This is the best explanation I have seen on TH-cam! Very clear and easy to understand, much better than other videos with millions of views. Keep up the great work! Subscribed
Thank you so much. I do try to keep my videos understandable for people who are interested in science. Thank you again, such a lovely comment.
@@LearningCurveScience Quality communication skills too in your videos...your students are really lucky
Just when I thought I had somewhat of a grasp that last example just made my brain walk out on me. Great vid!
The next time I'm captured by pirates and forced to walk the plank, I'll just take a teeny step and tell them that I just walked trillions of Planck lengths and maybe they'll set me free 🙂.
Well arg! i'm the pirate! 🏴☠and if you don't move 1 plank i will capture! but 1 trillion planck lengths=1.6*10^-23 metres that's smaller than a quark! so it's impossible to walk only 1 quark! because you are made of undecillions of quarks! i think i could do only 62 nonillion planks! or 1 mm. And if you walk more then 62 Nonillion planks i will set you free!
Man, this one hurt to think about. Especially that last comparison. Excellent video.
The fact that you can Envision the plank length at all really should humble more people than it does. Sometimes we're too smart for our own good and it causes us hubris when we should be humbled by capacity of our own brilliance. It just boggles my mind sometimes that our meat spaceship of seawater is capable of encapsulating the cosmos with inside our own imagination. I'm granting that we stand on the shoulders of giants to be able to conceptualize some of these things but the fact that we can even do it at all is truly fascinating.
Most underrated channel on YT
Theoretical limits on our ability to measure nature is a scary thought. Because it means that there are potential interactions that affects us but we'll never be able to detect them. Good Topic, Great video.
Thank you, yes theoretical limits are interesting and a little unsettling. Fortunately at the moment, Planck length is a long way from what we are able to discern.
it's a shame the views are so low for such a great video!
I'm glad you enjoyed the video. I appreciate every view of every video and really enjoy making them. I've learned so much whilst making these videos. Thank you very much
That's what I'm saying. I come back with some frequency to see...
I don't know how some get numbers quick and others get there slowly.
Either way, based on some of the similar (other) types of videos and the numbers they get, these will get there.
Looking forward to it.
@@jlwilder8436 ill try posting this on reddit. might get some viewers.
Yah man
Outstanding video production: well narrated and your explanation is spot-on. You really put size into perspective. Thank you,
It’s amazing to be able to visualize the relative size of these things. Extremely well done thank you.
That description of how small the plank length is at the end blew my mind. That is freaking smaaaallll.
I remember a story about an early physicist; 18-1900s. He stated that a pin dropped on Earth was a measurable quantity on the surface of Sirius. Or vice versa, anyway this happened at a conference of like-minded Science Nut Bags, and apparently they all immediately went hurtling off to their respective labs to sweat out and confirm his maths. I don't know if he used the Plank length to do this, but the analogy was a good one, and it stayed with me.
The important thing to understand with all Planck units is the point of them - that when these are used as base units, the universal physical constants, namely the Gravitational constant, Planck's constant, Boltzmann constant and the speed of light in vacuum all compute numerically to 1. So, that if instead of using m, kg and s, we were to use lp as the unit (and so on), our constants would all be numerically equal to 1 (with the correct dimensions, of course).
While the scales are cool, they are not meant to be understood by humans. They are only a mathematical convenience.
Just wanted to put it out here in the comment section, in order for the idea to be complete.
How did you derive this?
ah shit yeah that makes a lot of sense ty.
Trying to wrap my head around it though, thinking of a plank length as the smallest possible distance-before reading this-I was picturing as the point where reductionism of space ends and you only have 0 dimensional points that something can't 'move' across but can only jump from point to point since no smaller distance can be traveled. Would you say that's not the case?
Haven't had a chance to learn about the plank length and all the science surrounding, etc. yet, but it seems super interesting so I'm gonna start now hehe.
@@brown3394 Just some more food for thought: it's practically impossible for an entity/object to enter in contact with anything else, on top of that: at that size nothing should move like we expect, so don't visualise it in a static environment, because it's pure chaos down there (although I'm talking with bigger particles in mind, as I can't even imagine how hard it would be to look in the exact spot where something of that dimension exists)
@@jekytcktrue, man the science down there is the most curious sh|t ever-and trying to reconcile all that, with being made of that stuff-I love it.
I estimate that the theoretical minimum size that our visual cortex can process is in the vicinity of 1-10 micrometers. Interestingly, this is just above the wavelength of the light we see: red has a wavelength of about 0.9 micrometers.
The only correct video when I searched "how small we can measure"
Great video
I liked Brian Cox's explanation: a plank-squared is basically a pixel in the giant display that we call the universe (hugely(lol) paraphrasing here btw)
I thought this was gonna be a deep dive into the maths and physics of WHY it is the smallest possible length.
I'm familiar with this topic, but I love to hear peoples way of explaining such sizes. No one truly can imagine a plank length, no matter how many examples we name. It's that small😅
But everyone coming up with new and more crazy examples which is fascinating. It's like 90's kids bragging about who had the biggest pile of Pokémon cards. But it didn't matter because we all had a good time.
I'll defy subscribe and watch more. Nicely done bro.
Their is a growing idea that the black holes is compacted to Planck length, which of course gives an incredible density
The atom to proton with that marble reference was crazy. Insane we can study such things
EXCELLENT WORK. CONGRATS MATE.😍😍😍
Again, thank you so much for the lovely comment!
i like the short simple descriptions! ill check out a few more of your videos for sure!
I've heard it put this way:
Think of the size of the observable universe, around 92 billion light years in diameter. Now think of that compared to an atom in terms scale.
The Planck length is around the same scale compared to an atom.
I can't believe you're not a MUCH more popular channel.
Zi has some serious morning wood. A real plank you could say.
Thus the mystery.
The ending part is insane, its the most insane thing I've seen this year.
An egg cell to the universe = a planck length to an egg cell.
Much smaller than I expected, but more fascinating is the cell of life is the midpoint of length within all existence
WOW, love that comparison, just in auh! 😄
Thank you!
Glad you liked it!
Your videos are brilliant explanations of the most interesting aspects of our universe. It's just a shame that you aren't getting the same number of subscribers and likes as the Instagram crowd as you are much better at making people feel utterly insignificant and irrelevant. Cheers for the wisdom.
These videos are put together very well.
Thank you very much. I'm glad you think so. I do put a lot of effort into all my videos.
as a teacher, i think you have a talent of explaining abstract topics
2:02 I’m fascinated by the quality of the thought that science’s best definition of “empty space” is something that some particles appear to just cross easily. It’s like saying that the best definition of swamp is a region where people can just barely cross while other animals cross it without too much difficulty. Bravo!
So the Planck Length doesn't undergo Lorentz Contraction? That's fascinating-I didn't know that! Obviously the equations of Special Relativity themselves contain no hint of quantum phenomena. The Wikipedia page for "Length contraction" also doesn't mention it. I tried to think about its implications, and immediately ran into intuition-defying contradictions. But that's not unusual whenever SR and/or QM get involved. I'd love to understand more.
Planck length doesn't Contract because it is based on c (which of course is constant). It is one of so few fundamental universal concepts, based on those fundamental formulae. If it wasn't constant then those formulae would be meaningless and the structure of the universe would collapse into quantum foam...
I think his explanation there is a bit confused. You're going to say the Plank length is 1.6E-35 m. The person in the spaceship travelling 0.99c relative to you is going to say the Plank length is 1.6E-35 m. But if you had an object on Planck length long, the person in the spaceship would measure it as being ~2.3E-36m. If you could both measure things that small.
@@lennierofthethirdfaneofchu7286 The whole point of the Planck Length is that you cannot measure anything smaller-not even in theory. Let's take your example-an object that is Planck Length long in a stationary reference frame. Now, in a moving reference frame-as you said-according to Special Relativity, its length should be L' = γL, where γ = √(1-v²/c²). However, since that's smaller than the Planck Length, you'll NOT be able to measure it, no matter how sophisticated your instruments. I don't know what the results of measuring it will be. In any case, it'll either remain Planck lengths long, or its length will appear to have shrunk to zero units. You won't be able to measure anything in between.
This means that the equations for Lorentz Contraction fail at Planck Length. New, more comprehensive equations are required. This shouldn't be totally shocking. After all, Special Relativity showed that Galilean Relativity fails at speeds approaching *c.* And now, Quantum Mechanics is telling us that Special Relativity fails at Planck Length.
@@nHans No. The Planck units are an artifact of setting all those fundamental constants to 1. (It takes one Planck time for light in a vacuums to go one Planck length. If the universe is quantized at both the Planck length and Planck time, everything would either move at the speed of light or not at all.)
@@lennierofthethirdfaneofchu7286 Okay.
Planck length = the distance I can move before my wife asks where am I going.
Just found this guy, great stuff, keep tweeking algorithm
Thank You,
Really enjoy your videos.
It's really fun to learn Science this way. 🤗🤗🤗
Glad you like them!
Still not as small as my brain
Without the plank length there could not be a universe for there would always be an infinite distance between two objects, so the universe requires a limit to how small something can be. Like pixels.
I've heard the Planck length essentially (in our understanding) is the resolution of reality. So pretty dang HD! Makes an 8K TV hang its head in shame :P
Resolution is a bit misleading because it leads to the common misconception that all lengths are integer multiples of the Planck length, which they're not.
Mind blown. Thank you!!! I'm going to go lay down, now.
Great video! Looking forward to watching more of your work. Thanks.
How am I (one of) the first to comment?
Wow/early stage of something new is cool!; )
You will eventually have thousands and thousands of views; I guess this channel is at its egg cell stage, and as it grows exponentially, so will its audience! 😉
Very well done; I love the size comparisons of those very big to very small scales. This did the Planck Length justice.
I will watch more of your's.
Wow thank you so much for such a lovely comment. It is comments like this that make it all worthwhile. I'm glad you are enjoying my videos. Thanks again
It's really easy to imagine this, and easy to imagine something smaller if you're already applying a scale to it and visualizing it
3:02 "The up and down business is the flavor of the quark, and things are starting to get a little bit strange here."
Strange? I don't see any hadrons, yet.
"imagination injuries." LOL I might be dead then. My dreams are fucked up. But yeah good video bro. This crap always blows my mind. This and quantum entanglement. Oh, the double slit experiment is also terrifying! Cheers,
Me on a first date:
It’s really not that small, I’m just traveling at relativistic speeds!
So what you’re saying is, traveling at the speed of light isn’t as sexy as Freddie Mercury made it sound? :p
1/1000 of a beach ball mean there are room for 1000 "things" inside it. There are room for millions of grains of sand inside a "normal" size beachball of around 40cm dialmeter!
But there's nothing inside of a beach ball! if there was then i couldn't play beach ball :(
Planck Length is not necessarily the smallest size in the universe. It's the hypothetical smallest size you can observe without the microscope collapsing into its own black hole. There are some theoretical models that use even smaller objects such as string theory.
Well a microscope can't turn into a black hole! and nothing is smaller than the planck length! and if something was smaller than the planck length that would be so small that it would explode and dissapear out of existance!
I googled how small are the smallest things and this is the mind blowing video i got. If a human egg cell was the size of the universe planck length would be the size of the human egg.
Thanks for putting that into perspective.
The thing that really put it into perspective the best for me was the egg cell comparison. I suppose its "lucky" that the midway point is so easily comprehensible to a human.
Great point..!!
Lucky? It's not luck. Our observable universe is entirely subjective. "Observing" is nothing but receiving and interpreting radiation on our eyes. Without photons (electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength) we cannot observe. (What is the observable universe to a blind person? ) Coincidence that the human egg cell is in the middle? Hmm, maybe not. Maybe the universe is more than what we subjectively observe based on reception and interpretation of electromagnetic radiation received on our faces.
@@jebbaker9115 Not only that but even if you let it only be a perspective of the eye/light, you'd still be constrained by the speed of said light, which means, plainly, that the "whole universe" might be infinetely larger than the observable universe.
There is virtually no limit to the ways in which you could measure the universe; It makes me wonder if it's all some sort of miracle that "Reality" is held together they way it is
Great job! You deserve way more subscribers, sir!
Planck length is too big! We must go... LUDICROUS SMALL!!
My god. That ending comparison. How.
didnt think one could actually imagine planck length in any capacity, but that analogy of human egg cell in the center of the observable universe being the same thing as the center most cubic planck in the center of an egg cell blew my mind
Very well explained
So there's a hypothetical possibility there could be extraterrestrial life that, 1. Could potentially be traveling so fast around us that to our perspective have shrunk in size, unnoticeable by humans or technology we have? And 2. Could be so small (as to be efficient in temperature and energy) that they're undetectable due to being smaller than we can detect? (To the size of the neutrino or smaller)
Just throwing it out there. We still don't know how much we still don't know, but I really appreciate your content and helping us learn what we can know. 👍🏼
Don't understand how a planck length is the smallest anyone can imagine, when plancks can be many feet long!
that's it mate, you're walking the plank for that one.
@@brown3394
Nooo...it's the shortest plank a pirate ship can have 😧🦈
Superb explanation
Ever since I figured out about the planck length I always wonder about how matter cannot be made up of nothing it has to be made of something so by that logic everything is infinitely small
Very interesting. Thank you.
A valuable contribution to mankind's comprehension to mentally fathom the depths of the scale of Universal Existence.
Gonna show her this when she says it’s small 😈
So pleased I've found this channel I primarily watch kurzegagt so pleased Ive another cool comparable channel to learn from
Thank you so much. I don't think I rank anywhere near Kurzgesagt, but it is lovely of you to say so.
@@LearningCurveScience it's pretty amazing to have the chance to watch your channel before the 'moment' arrives and suddenly thousands will be enjoying these videos every day
truely mind blowing!
Mind - blown.
I will make a unit of size so small that it will make Planck length very massive by comparing it and I will call it Kutemeter.
I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for all this
"What's the smallest thing you can imagine?"
*looks down*
Imagine his girlfriend talking about the "Planck length". That could be taken the wrong way.
In this theory, the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics as a geometrical process represents the characteristics of time. The geometrical aspect of this process is based on Huygens’ Principle of 1670 that says:
“Every point on a light wave front has the potential for a new spherical 4πr² light wave".
Each point on the wave front represents a potential photon ∆E=hf electron interaction or coupling. The spherical surface forms a boundary condition or manifold for the uncertainty ∆×∆pᵪ≥h/4π of this interaction. Light waves radiate out spherically 4πr² with their interior forming the characteristic of three-dimensional space with the spherical surface forming a probabilistic wave front. Each point ∆E=hf on the wave front forms the potential for a new spherical wave, a photon of energy, a new oscillation or vibration that forms our future. We have to square the radius r² because process is unfolding relative to the surface of the sphere. Therefore, we have the probability wave function Ψ² is squared. The speed of the process is squared c², the speed of light and the charge of the electron is squared e² representing different aspect of the same process. The light photon ∆E=hf and the electron are two sides of the same process in this theory. The centre of the sphere forms a constant of action relative to the radius square r² and the circumference 2πr. This forms the Planck constant h/2π in mathematics of Quantum Mechanics
So we metazoan Earthlings, as represented by our barnyard chicken eggs, wooly mammoth embryos, Triceratops fossil eggs or good old human zygotes, are smack halfway between the teensiest possible thing and the hugest known thing? Somehow adds even more value to Leonardo's iconic drawing of a man as the measure of all things.
Hold your tongue and say I was born on a Pirate Ship, you are then walking the full length of the Planck!
awesome video, here before you hit 1M subs :D
Thank you very much, I applaud your optimism that I'll reach 1M subs. I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
Great work!!
Thank you very much, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
the proton, neither the neutron nor the electron are all made of three quarks
all of them are made of various numbers of quarks, and the number is changing constantly
from 15 quarks to 2 quarks
I discovered a length smaller than a Planck length. I hereby call it half a Planck length.