# Faster than the Planck second

1. Oct 27, 2012

### Edward Solomo

Today I was driving down the road, on the side of the road, there was a fence made of many vertical slats.

I noticed that that sun was blinking on and off like a strobe light, as each individual slat would shield the sun, and each space in between the slats would expose it. I thought, if my car remained moving at the same speed, but my parallel distance between the fence was increased, the sun would flicker at an even faster speed.

In fact, if I were to increase my distance enough, and also increase my velocity, and decrease the distance between each slat, the time between each flicker would be less than a planck second.

Am I missing something?

2. Oct 27, 2012

### Staff: Mentor

What is a "Planck second"?

3. Oct 27, 2012

### Edward Solomo

The time is takes light to travel one Planck Length.

4. Oct 27, 2012

### FalseVaccum89

I think that's actually called the "Planck time".

5. Oct 27, 2012

### FalseVaccum89

I would think the distance would either have to drop below the Planck length or your vehicle would have to travel faster than c (a ridiculous violation of SR) for that to occur, and most modern theories don't even posit lengths 'shorter' than the Planck length to have any meaning. Certainly not in the ever-popular string/M-theory, in which the intrinsic string length L$_{s}$, which is on the order of the Planck length, is considered to be the fundamental length.

Last edited: Oct 27, 2012
6. Oct 27, 2012

Staff Emeritus
What is a "Planck second", how does it differ from a regular second, and what makes you think it (or anything) is a minimum unit of time?

7. Oct 28, 2012

### Edward Solomo

Well, when I did the math, I realized it doesn't provide any practical way of getting a strobe frequency under the femtosecond.

It did get me to think about a way to time attoseconds though.

Imagine we had a thin cylindrical disc, centered about a laser. The sides of the disc is divided into 1 trillion parts, such that the laser can pass through each of the 1 trillion openings on the side of the disc.

We spin this disc 1,000 times per second, giving us 1 quadrillion hertz. Now, we take each individual pulse that exits the disc and we must find a way to divide it 1,000 times.

Perhaps you could let the laser pass through a very narrow fiber optic-like tunnel, with 1,000 appropriately spaced mini lasers that emit a laser perpendicular to the path of the laser, such that a capacitor would discharge for each of the 1,000 cells when the laser inference hit a critical value.

8. Oct 29, 2012

### ZapperZ

Staff Emeritus
Is there a point to this thread other than a mindless rambling?

Zz.

9. Oct 29, 2012

### JustinRyan

it would give you some crazy diffraction patterns...like a disco ball.