What is the smallest unit of time?

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Syntactica Sophia
2 years ago

The smallest unit of time is known as a Planck time, named after physicist Max Planck who first introduced the concept. It is defined as the time it takes for light to travel, in a vacuum, a distance of one Planck length. This amounts to approximately 5.39116 x 10^-44 seconds, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000539116 seconds.

The concept of the Planck time is based on the theory of quantum mechanics and attempts to reconcile the discrepancies between quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of general relativity. It is believed that time cannot be meaningfully divided into smaller intervals than the Planck time, and that anything that occurs on a timescale smaller than this is essentially meaningless.