Approximately 300 k kilometers per hour is the listed speed of light. Or 2.9e+17 nanometers per second
Sound travels at 1230 kmph or 330 meters per second with much less energy, so it is the oscilation back and forth of the molecules passing the sound on, ultimately these molecules "go back to the same place" and (almost) no detectable mass is passed on.
Lets look at the details of sound traveling at that speed inside atmospheric air, with 4 nm between each nitrogen molecule. Each molecule travels a total of 4 nm distance at that speed.
Time is the distance divided by the speed. 4 nm / 300 x1e+9 nmps = 1e-11 seconds
Lightwaves differin wavelength. (Justjoking withat differin spelling.) UV can be as small as 10 nanometers, violet is about 400nm, red 700nm and infrared can reach 1mm = 1M nm.
As opposed to sound, lightwaves carry a significant amount of energy with them which can be perceived as a particle. This is so much faster and stronger than sound that this energy can go through space without interacting with mass. The amount of energy tranferred is received in discrete quantities of energy and mass which we describe as energy packets, and which we call photons. Why is this? In my opinion this is because of units of discrete time.
If I have an object at 1 million nm (or 1 milimeter) away from the light source, then the UV light reaches it almost instantaniously as a wave. Actually the time it takes is: (again time = distance by speed) 1e+6 nm / 2.9e+17 nm/sec =~ 3.4e- 12 seconds, 3.4 trillionth's of a second.
But the ultraviolet is divided up into 100,000 pulses, reaching there at the same instant. The time it takes for each pulse to pulsate is 100,000 times shorter than the time it took the infrared light to do the full distance, since each pulse must traverse a 100,000-times shorter distance. So the time is approximately 3.4e-17. Or about one hundredth of a millionth of a billionth
Gamma rays can be as short as the Planck Length, derived from calculations of heat, and no shorter. So here's our minimum, postulating that the world is discrete and not continuous, just like matter is discrete in bundles of atoms and photons: So the smallest "wavelength" possible is 1.6e- 26 nm.
The time for a single Gamma ray wavelength to reach this would be 1.6e-26 nm / 2.9e+17 nm/sec = 5.5e-44 sec
The shortest possible time unit, indeed the discrete individually existing single unit of time is therefore 5.5e-44 parts of a second or one millionth of a septillionth of a second. Anything less than that is being done simultaniously at the same time, with no time advancement.
This was written here in order to show my halfbaked simultaneous misunderstanding and misrepresentation of science, and in order to be corrected by extremely interesting thinkers who will hopefully point me and the other uninformed readers to interesting articles that will forever change our view and understanding.-- pashute, Jul 11 2021 Planck time (and other units) https://en.wikipedi...tory_and_definitionPrior art... [neutrinos_shadow, Jul 12 2021] Cosmological bingo http://curious.astr...-light-intermediateJust one example [4and20, Jul 12 2021] Lower limit of gamma wavelength https://en.wikipedi.../Two-photon_physics… photon-photon interaction [Frankx, Jul 15 2021] //to show my simultaneous misunderstanding and misrepresentation of science, and in order to be corrected//
No, I think you are exactly right. Well done, and I hope you get nominated for next year's nibble prize.-- pocmloc, Jul 11 2021 Actually is this not just blatantly obvious? Strip away all the vibration and wavelength guff, the smallest possible amount of time is simply the Planck length divided by the speed of light.
Hmm... plank... beam... you have nailed it. You joist need to get the panel to support you, and hope no-one blocks you; rafter that, it should be plane sailing.-- pocmloc, Jul 11 2021 Well done! You seem to have independently discovered Planck Time, about 120 years after the man himself. And your value is (to a reasonable approximation) correct.-- neutrinos_shadow, Jul 12 2021 What [neutrinos_shadow] said - this is basically the rationale behind both the Plank units of length and time - it's an attempt to granulate/discrete-ise reality based on a given set of assumptions.-- zen_tom, Jul 12 2021 Is it considered sufficiently couth to point out that 2 of Planck's 4 universal constants -- speed of light, c, and universal gravity, G, were nowhere near being constants at the time and remain in some doubt?-- 4and20, Jul 12 2021 [4and20]; fun fact: the speed of light is now defined as a constant. So if the "metre" is redefined, the "second" is too, to keep c at 299,792,458m/s precisely.-- neutrinos_shadow, Jul 12 2021 The metre being redefined out of existence to "solve" a problem is one of my ancient bugabears of course, posted long ago here on HB. However, if you describe c in m/s and the metre as its inverse 1/x second, it seems to me that at least the second would need to have some fixed value. However, the whole thing appears to be a transparently stupid game to hide universal ignorance, while surrounding such self-appointed keepers of the constants are scientists still constantly waving their arms about evidence of variable speeds of light.-- 4and20, Jul 12 2021 //variable speeds of light// This I don't know about. On the other hand, if the speed of light ISN'T constant, a lot of science (cosmology in particular) falls apart...-- neutrinos_shadow, Jul 12 2021 // Is it considered sufficiently couth to point out that 2 of Planck's 4 universal constants -- speed of light, c, and universal gravity, G, were nowhere near being constants at the time and remain in some doubt?//
No. No it isn't, so well done.-- Voice, Jul 13 2021 2 of 4 is not good enough. Doubt everything.-- pocmloc, Jul 13 2021 I skimmed an article the other day which seemed to hint that there's an upper boundary of EM frequency. So, if so, there you are.-- FlyingToaster, Jul 13 2021 Apparently [link] photon-photon scattering limits cosmological gamma wavelength to greater than 1.5 x 10 ^-20 m. Above that energy, positron- electron formation starts to happen (literally creating matter from energy). That’s for cosmological photons, so perhaps not an absolute limit for photons generally, but presumably, above a certain energy level, particle formation will begin to dominate anyway.-- Frankx, Jul 15 2021 random, halfbakery