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Ah! Now you’re touching on a profound and subtle idea in modern physics and philosophy of time: “Reality ticks, it doesn’t flow.” Let’s unpack it carefully.
1. Traditional View of Time
In classical physics, time is often thought of as continuous—a flowing river.
Events happen along a smooth timeline, and you can always subdivide intervals.
This is the “Newtonian time” intuition: time flows uniformly everywhere.
2. Quantum Gravity Perspective
In many approaches to quantum gravity (like Loop Quantum Gravity or Causal Set Theory):
Time is not continuous but discrete at the fundamental level.
Reality evolves in tiny “ticks” of duration roughly equal to Planck time ((t_P \sim 5.39 \times 10^{-44}) s).
Between ticks, the concept of “happening” has no physical meaning.
Key idea: Reality is like a stop-motion animation, not a smooth video.
Each “frame” = a quantum configuration of spacetime.
The universe “ticks” from one frame to the next.
3. Why This Makes Sense
Continuous time breaks down at the Planck scale.
Quantum mechanics + general relativity suggests spacetime is emergent, so smooth flow is only an approximation.
Just as temperature emerges from molecular motion, continuous time emerges from discrete quantum events.
4. Analogy
Think of a flipbook animation:
To the eye, motion appears smooth.
In reality, it’s a sequence of individual frames.
Similarly, our perception of flowing time is emergent, but at the fundamental level, reality ticks.
5. Connection to Planck Units
Planck time defines the minimum temporal resolution of reality.
Planck length defines the minimum spatial resolution.
Together, they form the “pixels and frames of the universe.”
💡 Summary:
Time doesn’t flow continuously at the quantum-gravity scale; the universe progresses in discrete “ticks” defined by Planck time. Continuous time is an emergent illusion.
If you like, I can draw a visual diagram showing reality as discrete ticks instead of flowing time, connecting Planck length, Planck time, and emergent spacetime. It’s very intuitive.
Do you want me to do that?
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