Matter is infinitely small

[GuidoHunter]

Matter is energy

Remember, mass is equivalent to energy; they can be used interchangeably in equations. If you'd like to start dividing energy as if it were a line segment, go ahead. Also, all particles are also waves, so that might throw a kink in things, too

Regarding the quarks and strings... when you get down to the level of subatomic particles, protons, neutrons, and electrons are using photons and mesons to be created, form their respective antiparticles, annihilate, and give off energy, all on the order of around 10E-15 seconds, so things are blinking in and out of existence quite often, so trying to divide anything besides quarks and still having matter in the sense that we know it is quite difficult. Contrary to what I (and it seems others) first believed, strings are not a further division of quarks. Strings are only a representation of particles as if they traveled in a wave-type forms. The best established string theory also describes our universe in fourteen dimensions, so it has its problems, too.

Anyway, my point is that quantum physics is way too complicated to give any sense to anything.

[alainbryden]

you made alot of assumptions there and called them true. But your point is noted.

[Thingy]

I believe that scientists have found the smallest unit of measure possible. I THINK (im not 100% sure on this) that they did it with some sort of higher level calculus. Where they take the derivitive of a derivitive and so on and so forth of a certain function until they reached a constant (the derivitive of a constant doesn't exist), and so there cant be anything smaller than that. Think of it as the screen resolution of the universe. I think it was somewhere around 2.0 * 10^-47 nanometers. They named it(i am sure on this) the Planck length, named after the Physisist Max Planck.

But my point is that no matter can be smaller than this unit of measure, because anything smaller would have NO effect on the rest of the universe, no matter what. So anything smaller might as well not exist.

[alainbryden]

umm...right. What function was this that was so important and came down that constant? you do realise like some functions can never be differentiated down to a constant? like y = x^-1. Wait until you're half way through grade 11 calculus before making assumptions like that. IF you want the smallest unit of mesurement possible, that would be 0.000...1 th

[Thingy]

Yeah some functions cant be brought down to a constant, like the definition of e. But the one they used can. Like i said, i wasnt sure they might have taken the limit of something im not sure, I am not a physisist, i just know for sure what they named it and that they found it. Im not gonna pretend to know EXACTLY how they found it.

Oh and 0.000000000.....1 doesnt work because it equals 0 for the same reason .99999999999999999.... = 1. You really havent measured anything at all.

[Nightstar]

hrmm lets see....according to string theory, strings cannot be broken down forever. you can break them down for a long time, but eventually quantum effects stop you from cutting them further.
a quote from Scientific American- "In addition to traveling as a unit or vibrationg along its length, a subatomic string can wind up like a spring. Suppose that space has a cylindrical shape. If the circumference is larger than the minimum allowed string length, each increase in the travel speed requires a small increment in energy, whereas each extra winding requires a large one. But if the circumfereance is smaller than the minimum length, an extra winding is less costly than an extra bit of velocity. The net energy-which is all that really matters-is the same for both small and large circumferances. In effect, the string does not shrink.This property prevents matter from reaching an infinite density." and an infinitly small size. Essencially what they are saying, is that a small string is lighter than a large one, but if you try to squeeze the small one smaller than it can get, it gets heavy again.

what you have to understand about strings, is that they are more like the energy defining the quark, or electron, than a particle of matter themselves. the resonate in 8 dimensions, and that energy is displayed as the trapped particles in our 3 dimensions

[talisman]

In order to find out whether quarks are made of any smaller parts, one would have to smash some together. To find whether those parts are made of smaller parts, one would have to smash them together. Eventually, a point is reached at which the energy required to smash the particles together is greater than what is available in the universe. This would be the fundamental unit of matter, since nothing more fundamental could ever be observed, and thus ever exist.

One can divide all one wants in one's head, but if it hasn't been observed in real life, then it can't exist.

[peregrine]

After looking into the matter (pardon the pun) it seems that Zeno's paradox can be used to prove that there IS a quantum to matter/distance.

Going with what you said originally, Specforces: assume there is no quantum to matter/distance; you take a line: make halves, 4ths, 8ths, 16ths etc. ad infinitum... you'd end up with infinite infinitely small line segments making a distance.

When you try to traverse that distance with a velocity, you have a problem... no matter how small things may be, an infinite number of them would still be an infinite distance. No velocity could traverse an infinite distance in a finite amount of time.

Additionally, if you have two line segments of different lengths and apply that dividing method to them, you end up with the exact same thing for both of them: a line made of an infinite number of infinitely small line segments.

These two logical arguments would seem to disprove both motion and distance. They would be impossible. BTW, this was the main tenant of Zeno's teacher's philosophy: motion, distance, and changes in the physical world are illusions... but we're working off the assumption that they DO exist. Seeing as (or assuming that) motion and distance are real occurances, it refutes these two arguments and subsequently refutes the assumption that matter/distance are infititely divisible.

Hence, if matter and distance are NOT infinitely divisible, they must have a definite quantum level from a logical standpoint.

Now whether or not the universe wants to follow logical reasoning.... I don't know ; ) it is a strange place after all.... but that's the logical proof that definite quantums exist.

[DemonThing]

Now, I think that there would be no way to determine if matter is infinitely small or not. Anything smaller than the Planck length (about 1.6 x 10^-35 metres) is indistinguishable. Although someone might predict with physical theories whether such is the case or not, there would not and could not be any experimental evidence to prove or disprove this hypothesis.

I choose to believe that matter is not infinitely small, and exists in definite amounts.

Also, regarding GuidoHunter's comment, if you were suggesting that energy is infinitely divisible, such is not the case, and it exists in definite quanta, states quantum theory.

[brutisgrr]

You guys just said we don't exist. That's all there is to it. Don't plumb them depths or you might kill us all.

[Baby-Girl]

um spec u my dawg, so can u run that by me again? thi time s l o w e r ? lol

[grim001]

Matter is made out of energy. They are one and the same, in different forms.

Matter is made out of discrete packets of energy, therefore it is not infinitely divisible. If you kept dividing you would come back to energy eventually. Energy is infinitely divisible. Thinking about it this way, there is no paradox.

In response to peregrine, just because two quantities are both divisible into an infinite number of parts does not mean they are equal. 27 and 32 are both divisible into an infinite number of smaller decimals, but that doesn't mean they are equal. Furthermore, travelling over a finite distance that is divisible into infinitely small units is not mathematically illogical because of a little concept called "limits" that is also covered in calculus. Calc was invented to deal with exactly that type of paradox.