The term Planck scale refers to the smallest quantities of space, time, energy, and other units that are similar in magnitude to corresponding Planck units.
Ever wondered how small can get?
Like, really small? Welcome to the bizarre and exclusive realm of Planck time and Planck length — the absolute lower limits of measurement where reality itself starts glitching like a laggy video game. These aren’t just tiny numbers; they’re the fundamental building blocks of space and time—so ridiculously small that even atoms would need a magnifying glass to see them.
Just How Small Are We Talking?
Planck length (1.6 × 10⁻³⁵ meters) is so small that comparing it to a proton (which is already absurdly tiny) is like comparing a grain of sand to the entire observable universe.
Planck time (5.39 × 10⁻⁴⁴ seconds) is even wilder—it’s the time it takes for light, the fastest thing in existence, to travel one Planck length. That’s so fast that if the universe itself restarted every Planck time, it would have been reborn more times than you could count—before you even blinked.
Where Do These Numbers Come From?
They aren’t cooked up by physicists trying to flex their calculators. They arise naturally from fundamental constants: the speed of light (c), Newton’s gravitational constant (G), and Planck’s constant (h). Mash them together in a mathematical blender, and out comes the Planck scale—a domain where quantum mechanics and gravity stop being polite and start getting real.
The Planck Era: When Physics Had a Meltdown
The Planck era is the first unimaginably tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, where the universe was so hot, dense, and chaotic that physics basically threw up its hands and said, “Good luck figuring this out.”
At this scale, space and time might not even be smooth—they could be quantized, coming in indivisible chunks like the pixels of a cosmic simulation. The problem? Our best theories—general relativity and quantum mechanics—completely break down at the Planck scale. It’s the theoretical equivalent of dividing by zero.
We need a unified theory of quantum gravity to make sense of it all, but so far, even our brightest minds are still scratching their heads.
The Formal Declaration
And here I formally declare: when we speak of the Planck scale’s spatial dimensions, we will no longer call them width, height, and length. From this point forward:
- Plidth (Planck width)
- Pleigth (Planck height)
- Plength (Planck length)
Three new tongue-twisting units for a universe already too small for ordinary syllables. If space is going to get weird, our language should keep up.
Aside: This proposal is not merely whimsy. Language itself is a tool of physics. By reframing the axes with “Plidth, Pleigth, and Plength,” we highlight the strangeness of the Planck regime — where ordinary dimensions collapse into a quantum thicket. Think of it as half wordplay, half manifesto.¹
Final Word
Planck time and Planck length are the universe’s way of telling us, “You can’t sit with us.” They mark the boundary where the known laws of physics stop working and speculation takes over. Until we crack quantum gravity, this mysterious realm remains the VIP section of the universe—roped off with quantum velvet and guarded by the bouncers of uncertainty.
Will we ever get past the ropes? Maybe. But for now, we’ve got Plidth, Pleigth, and Plength to remind us just how exclusive the club really is.
¹ Proposed here as part of Planksip’s continuing exploration of language as a scientific instrument.