On Sat, Oct 25, 2003 at 03:15:57PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote:
> I don't know why anyone thought the speed of light had anything to do
Maybe you should read up on general relativity.
> with this problem. The lamp can be at a single point and so can its
A geometrical point has zero length and width and hence has no existence in
the real universe. The Planck time quantum defines the smallest meaningful
parcel of spacetime. At our current level of knowledge an oscillator takes
a lot more resources than that to implement, and hence is huge in comparison.
> switch. Since nothing has to travel between switching events the
> speed of light is not relevant. By present theories the shortest
An abstract clock has no existance. An implementation of a clock has physical
extent, a cycle time, and a measurement process to go along with it. All of
those are relativistically/quantum constrained.
> meaningful time interval is on the order of the Planck time ~10^-43
> sec which depends on the gravitational constant and Planck's constant
> as well as the speed of light.
Right. Given the speed of light, and the duration of Planck time quantum you
can see the ultimate resolution level of a clock. The meaning of change of
state ceases to exist once you go below that.
-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="
http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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Received on Sat Oct 25 2003 - 18:52:40 PDT