Related papers: The Emergence of the Planck Scale
The Planck scale is considered to be a natural minimum scale, made up as it is solely of fundamental constants. However the Planck scale is well beyond the scales encountered in real life, these latter being at least of the order of the…
Though the Planck scale is encountered in Quantum SuperString Theory and Quantum Gravity, it is the Compton scale of elementary particles which is encountered in the physical world. An explanation for this is given in terms of Brownian…
We provide a rationale for the Planck scale being the minimum scale in the universe, as also its specific numerical values. In the process we answer the question of why the Planck scale is $10^{20}$ times the Compton scale of elementary…
Planck scale physics represents a future challenge, located between particle physics and general relativity. The Planck scale marks a threshold beyond which the old description of spacetime breaks down and conceptually new phenomena must…
Recent progress in quantum gravity and string theory has raised interest among scientists to whether or not nature behaves discretely at the Planck scale. There are two attitudes twoards this discretenes i.e. top-down and bottom-up…
As in an earlier paper we start from the hypothesis that physics on the Planck scale should be described by means of concepts taken from ``discrete mathematics''. This goal is realized by developing a scheme being based on the dynamical…
The implementation of a Planck-scale high frequency and short wavelength cutoff in quantum theories on expanding backgrounds may have potentially nontrivial implications, such as the breaking of local Lorentz invariance and the existence of…
We examine the fractal structure of the physical universe from the large scale to the smallest scale, including the phenomenon of fractal scaling. This is explained in terms of a stochastic underpinning for the laws of physics. A picture in…
This is the first part in a series of two papers, where we consider a specific microscopic model of spacetime. In our model Planck size quantum black holes are taken to be the fundamental building blocks of space and time. Spacetime is…
At Planck-scale, spacetime is "foamy" due to quantum fluctuations predicted by quantum gravity. Here we consider the possibility of using spacetime foam-induced phase incoherence of light from distant galaxies and gamma-ray bursters to…
This author's recent proposal of interferometric tests of Planck-scale-related properties of space-time is here revisited from a strictly phenomenological viewpoint. The results announced previously are rederived using elementary…
We review a few topics in Planck-scale physics, with emphasis on possible manifestations in relatively low energy. The selected topics include quantum fluctuations of spacetime, their cumulative effects, uncertainties in energy-momentum…
Traditional derivations of the Planck mass ignore the role of charge and spin in general relativity. From the Kerr-Newman null surface and horizon radii, quantized charge and spin dependence are introduced in an extended Planck scale of…
The relevance of the Planck scale to a theory of quantum gravity has become a worryingly little examined assumption that goes unchallenged in the majority of research in this area. However, in all scientific honesty, the significance of…
The study of physics at the Planck scale has garnered significant attention due to its implications for understanding the fundamental nature of the universe. At the Planck scale, quantum fluctuations challenge the classical notion of…
More than 65 years ago, John Wheeler suggested that quantum uncertainties of the metric would be of order one at the Planck scale, leading to large fluctuations in spacetime geometry and topology, which he termed "spacetime foam." In this…
I briefly review some scenarios for the role of the Planck length in quantum gravity. In particular, I examine the differences between the schemes in which quantum gravity is expected to introduce a maximum acceleration and the schemes in…
A new class of electromagnetic composite particles is proposed. The composites are very small (the Compton scale), potentially long-lived, would have unique interactions with atomic and nuclear systems, and, if they exist, could explain a…
Starting from a background Zero Point Field (or Dark Energy) we show how an array of oscillators at the Planck scale leads to the formation of elementary particles and spacetime and also to a cosmology consistent with latest observations.
Suppose the usual description of spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold with a Lorentzian metric breaks down at Planck energies. Can we still construct sensible theoretical models of the universe? Are they testable? Do they lead to a…