# Chronon & Planck's Time

What is the difference between a chronon and planck's time? A few websites said they were the same thing. But other websites showed planck's time as being smaller than a chronon. And those websites didn't always agree on how small planck's time or a chronon is.

marcus
Gold Member
Dearly Missed
Originally posted by Nim
What is the difference between a chronon and planck's time? A few websites said they were the same thing. But other websites showed planck's time as being smaller than a chronon. And those websites didn't always agree on how small planck's time or a chronon is.

One way to approach this question is to ask what has traditionally usually been meant by "Planck time"

Planck proposed a set of natural units in 1899 to a meeting of the Prussian Academy and the time unit he proposed was
for practical purposes the same as what is called "Planck time" today----about 0.539 E-43 second.

For over 100 years the Planck time unit has been this.

What the "chronon" is must depend on whatever writer is talking. It is not a well-established traditional thing, so could mean anything someone wants it to mean. The basic string theory scale is not solidly nailed down so if there is a "chronon" in that context it could be drifting around changing from author to author.

Here is how to remember Planck units:

Memorize what the area is and get all the rest from that.

The area is hbar G/c3

Therefore the length is sqrt(hbar G/c3)

The unit time is how long light takes to go unit length so it equals unit length divided by c. Or you can divide by c2 inside the square root and get

Planck time unit equals sqrt(hbar G/c5)

Since Planck time is 0.539 E-43 second, if you multiply by E45 you get 53.9 seconds which is on same scale as a ordinary minute.

So next time someone on telephone says "please wait a minute. I put you on hold for a minute" remember that this means

E45 Planck time units, or maybe you like it better written

1045 Planck time units

Thanks for the answser.

This isn't a physics question. But how do you make those floating numbers like that 45 you have by the 10?

marcus
Gold Member
Dearly Missed
Originally posted by Nim
Thanks for the answser.

This isn't a physics question. But how do you make those floating numbers like that 45 you have by the 10?

A2 is written like this (but with the spaces removed)

A[s u p]2[/s u p]

subscripts are written like superscripts except you say "sub"