Planck's Time: Reality As Grains of Rice

I have always been interested in superlatives. Questions such as "What is the Fastest Jet?", "What is the Tallest Building?", "Where is the Deepest Point in the Ocean?", and "Who is the Richest Human on the Planet?" has fascinated me all my life. In the fast-paced society of the United States, can something be too fast? People can be heard saying "I will be there in a minute.", "Just a sec...", or "It'll just take half a second." Is there a limit to how much time itself can be broken down?" Yes. Planck's Time is the shortest possible time in our universe.

Planck's Time is defined as 10E-43 seconds. With President Barack Obama's Economic Stimulus Package, the citizens of the United States of America are becoming familiar with the concept of a Trillion Dollars or 10E+12 dollars. Planck's Time is a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a millionth of a second. Reality breaks down at that point and time has no meaning. No shorter period of time exists.

My new Canon Powershot A590 IS digital camera can take photographs at a speed of 1.4 frames per second. Decent performance for a camera that costs less than $100. The fastest Canon digital camera, the EOS-1D Mark III SLR, can take photographs at 10.0 frames per second. If we can build a camera that take pictures at Planck's Time intervals (10E+43 frames per second), we will see something strange and wonderful in a few of the vast number of photos we have. Some of the photos will be totally black beacuse reality itself does not exist in that photograph. No thing exists. Nada. Not even the camera. To be more precise, our reality no longer exists as a continuous chain of events in that specific photo frame.

Place a strand of uncooked spaghetti pasta on a table. Next to the single strand, put enough grains of rice (pick your favorite type) end-to-end to equal the length of the spaghetti. If people see you, tell them that you are in the middle of a quantum physics experiment and cannot be interrupted. We perceive reality as a continuous strand of spaghetti pasta, but true reality may exist as discrete grains of rice. Between the grains of rice, nothing or everything may happen.

I am a little less worried about our fast-paced world because I know now that there is a limit to how fast we can be. I also know another superlative: "What is the Shortest Time Interval?" Answer: Planck's Time. You can cook the pasta and rice now.