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From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: Continuous vs. discrete
Message-ID: <10667@uwm.edu>
Date: 1 Apr 91 16:02:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: uwm.10667
References: <1991Mar30.040808.1896@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <1991Mar31.204818.15437@cs.ubc.ca> <70401@brunix.UUCP>
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>In article <1991Mar31.204818.15437@cs.ubc.ca>, scharein@cs.ubc.ca (Robert Scharein) writes:
(Space time is not discrete on the quantum scale (10^-23 seconds), but on the
Quantum Gravity scale...)

In article <70401@brunix.UUCP> cs196006@cs.brown.edu (Josh Hendrix) writes:
>Whoa! Stop the bus! Wait a minute! I am not a physicist, and have only read a
>few books on 'layman's quantum mechanics', but I've never run across this 
>assertion...

It's more or less by an implicit consensus in the theoretical literature that
the fundamental length, and time values derived from Planck's constant, the
constant of gravitation, and the speed of light relate to fundamental units of
measurement beyond which our notions of a continuum break down.

Otherwise General Relativity would be true in the small, which it is not...

The planck mass (which is actually weighable on a fairly sensitive scale)
would be a natural threshold marking the boundary between small-scale
quantum phenomena and large scale gravitational phenomena.

You'll see the assumption (or convention) made by implication excatly when
they say "Choose units that make c, h-bar and G equal to one...".  Nobody
really thinks much of it (yet), but it will relate to a fundamental truth in
the next major breakthrough in our knowledge of Physics: namely that the
constants are calibration factors that relate our everyday units to God's
Units...