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Can time be quantised? Would it be the smallest distance between two photons moving in the same direction or the shortest wavelength?

Qmechanic
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Fatty S
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    Quantization does not do what you think it does. In particular, it produces no "minimum distance", neither in time nor space. – ACuriousMind Oct 29 '14 at 12:19
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    Possible duplicates: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/9720/2451 , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/35674/2451 , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/89975/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Oct 29 '14 at 12:34
  • @ACuriousMind maybe quantization is not necessarily a minimum distance but certainly a minimum (or characteristic) length is quantization – Nikos M. Oct 29 '14 at 15:10

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Can time be quantised? Would it be the smallest distance between two photons moving in the same direction or the shortest wavelength?

"Can" time be quantized? Yes it can. We have atomic clocks working for us after all, giving us increments of time.

Is this phenomenon sufficient to say time in general comes in increments? No.

The same is true about quantization of space. Space can be quantized. A crystal is a clear manifestation of quantization of space. This is not sufficient to conclude that space is quantized.

This question morphs into digital physics, which has problems with the symmetries and localities of quantum mechanics and quantum field theories that have been validated by a large number of experiments.

anna v
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  • +1, it should be mentioned of approaches to quantum gravity in a discrete framework (as digital physics mentioned), spin foams, LQG et al. Do they have problems, sure, not more than popular attempts (see string theory), and we would have to talk about the physical relevantness (or intuition if you like) of the various attempts – Nikos M. Oct 29 '14 at 15:15