| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Planck Time 2009

Page history last edited by alicerottersman@yahoo.com 15 years ago

Planck Time

Assuming the Big Bang Theory is correct, all four fundamental forces (gravity, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism) were all one before the Era of 1 Planck Time, 10-43 seconds into the universe's creation. Besides the unity of the forces nothing is really known about the time before the Era of 1 Planck Time; it doesn't even have its own name. At 10-43 seconds however, all matter, energy, space, and time spilled forth from a singularity.

     Why 10-43 seconds? 

     10-43 seconds is the measure of one planck time (named for Max Planck), and to explain where that number came from a few other things must be cleared up first. Compton scattering is when photons are dispersed by electrons smacking into them, therefore the Compton wavelength of  particle is the wavelength of a photon whose energy is equal to the rest-mass of the original particle. The Compton wavelength gives the smallest scale to locate an event horizon, also known as a Schwarzschild Radius. This  radius represents the belt past which no particles, light, or information can be obtained. If any mass degenerates past the event horizon it becomes a black hole. The event horizon can be thought of as a limit with an equation of L=Gm/c2, G is the gravitational constant, m is the mass, and c is the speed of light. Knowing this limit, we can get back to the Compton wavelength to find the smallest scale in which we could locate it, this is done with  λ= h/mc. The Planck constant, a ratio between the energy of a photon and  its frequency, is h.

     With this information, we can finally return to the Planck time. First however, the Planck length should be found:

The amount of time it takes light to travel across this length gives us the (drum roll) planck time:                                                                                                                                                                                        

cosmictm1.jpg

http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/images/cosmictm1.jpg

Diagram of Planck Era in relation to the rest of the big bang.

--Alice R.

 

Bibliography

 Nave, R. "Big Bang models back to Planck time."  HyperPhysics Concepts. 2009. Hyperphysics. 17 March 2009. <http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/astro/planck.html>

 

"Compton Wavelength." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2009. Wikipedia. 17 March 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton_wavelength>       

 

The Facts on File Dictionary of Physics. New York: Market House Books Ltd, 1999.

 

 

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.