The Planck Unit

In the late 1890s, German theoretical physicist Max Planck proposed a set of units to simplify the expression of physics laws. Using just five constants in nature (including the speed of light and the gravitational constant), you, me and even aliens from Xylanthia could arrive at these same Planck units.

The basic Planck units are length, mass, temperature, time and charge.

So, let’s consider the unit of Planck length for a moment. The proton is about 100 million trillion times larger than the Planck length. To put this into perspective, if we scaled the proton up to the size of the observable universe, the Planck length would be a mere trip from Tokyo to Chicago. The 14-hour flight may seem long to you, but to the universe, it would go completely unnoticed.

The Planck scale was invented as a set of universal units, so it was a shock when those limits also turned out to be the limits where the known laws of physics applied. For example, a distance smaller than the Planck length just doesn’t make sense—the physics breaks down.

Physicists don’t know what actually goes on at the Planck scale, but they can speculate. Some theoretical particle physicists predict all four fundamental forces—gravity, the weak force, electromagnetism and the strong force—finally merge into one force at this energy. Quantum gravity and superstrings are also possible phenomena that might dominate at the Planck energy scale.

The Planck scale is the universal limit, beyond which the currently known laws of physics break.

Where Material Reality Emerges

Below the Plank limit, it has been postulated that quantum foam (or spacetime foam, or spacetime bubble) is a theoretical quantum fluctuation of spacetime on very small scales due to quantum mechanics. The theory predicts that at this small scale, particles of matter and antimatter are constantly created and destroyed. These subatomic objects are called virtual particles. The idea was devised by John Wheeler in 1955.

With an incomplete theory of quantum gravity, it is impossible to be certain what spacetime looks like at small scales. However, there is no definitive reason that spacetime needs to be fundamentally smooth. It is possible that instead, in a quantum theory of gravity, spacetime would consist of many small, ever-changing regions in which space and time are not definite, but fluctuate in a foam-like manner.

John Wheeler suggested that the uncertainty principle might imply that over sufficiently small distances and sufficiently brief intervals of time, the "very geometry of spacetime fluctuates". These fluctuations could be large enough to cause significant departures from the smooth spacetime seen at macroscopic scales, giving spacetime a "foamy" character.