Why Does The Universe Have 62 Layers?

This apple is at the center of the

universe.

There are roughly 100 million cells

inside an apple and 10 the^ of 25

individual atoms. Each one stretching

for no more than a nanometer across. The

highest number of things that you could

fit inside an apple would be roughly 10

the^ of 102 measured in the smallest

possible cubic unit, a plank volume.

Looking upwards, you could fit roughly

100 apples inside the volume of the

average person and about 10 the^ of 25

inside the volume of the Earth. Roughly

10 the^ of 66 could fit inside the Milky

Way and around 10 to the^ of 84 could

fill the entire extent of the known

cosmos.

And so the apple and you sit at a nexus,

a confluence of competing forces,

interactions, and laws. A place where

all the competing powers of the universe

reach an uneasy truce. The apple is at

the balance point of sizes in the

universe.

The apple at about 10 cm across is

roughly 35 orders of magnitude larger

than the plank length, the smallest

conceivable measure of distance. [music]

And it's about 27 orders of magnitude

smaller than the observable horizon of

the cosmos.

And so 62

62 orders of magnitude separate the

smallest to the largest scales within

the universe. A random number that

describes [music] the entire cosmos and

all its components.

At least it may seem random at first.

For halfway to the bottom, halfway to

the top, the apple is at the center of

the universe. And why it sits precisely

at that balance point may explain why

the cosmos exists at all.

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Space astronauts aboard the

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As I began my university studies, I

asked my venerable teacher for advice

regarding the conditions and prospects

of my chosen field of study. He

described physics to me as a highly

developed nearly fully matured science

and that theoretical physics is

noticeably approaching its completion to

the same degree as geometry did

centuries ago.

So said Max Plank of his teacher Philip

von Jolly under whom he studied in 1875.

And 25 years later, Max Plank would, to

the constonation of his former mentor,

almost entirely revolutionized the

supposedly fully matured science of

physics, and he didn't even mean to.

Plank had been hungry for a physics

education, but he'd found his lectures

to be stuffy and old-fashioned. Besides

the demonstrations of von Jolly, he also

considered his professors Herman von

Helmholtz disorganized and slow, and

Gustaf Kirchoff dry and monotonous. So

he largely taught himself the perfect

recipe for a revolutionary.

At the close of the 18th century, Plank

was attempting to mop up what Von Jolly

would have considered one of the final

long-standing puzzles in physics.

Mathematically describing the spectrum

of radiation emitted by [music] hot

glowing things, like a metal poker taken

out of a fire. Genius after genius had

tried their luck to no avail. But the

joke goes that there are two kinds of

physicists. Those who play by the rules

and those who get physical constants

named after them. And so Plank persisted

and after exhausting all other

possibilities, he introduced what he

called a mathematical trick. Instead of

pouring out light in all possible

quantities, Plank assumed that these hot

objects could only emit discrete chunks

or quanta of radiation. He then

introduced a special number to describe

the smallest possible chunk of light,

a constant. And so the unstoppable fires

of revolution were lit.

By plank's time, physicists had already

grown accustomed [music] to physical

constants. Of course, there are

artificial ones created by scientists,

standardized measurements of space,

time, and weight like the ounce and the

meter. But more importantly, and more

fundamentally, there were some that seem

to pop out of theories of nature, like

Newton's constant that described how

strong gravity was or the speed of

light. Values that seem to have no

explanation. They just were. But despite

centuries of consideration, no constant

had ever described something so tiny as

that which plank used to describe

quantum of light. Indeed, the most

precise measurements at the time were

around a thousandth of an inch or a few

microns. With this kind of equipment,

scientists could study bacteria and the

internal structures of cells. But

plank's constant went far, far beyond

that.

This number tells us where and when and

how quantum effects become overwhelming.

Where the certainties of the world we

know melt away into probabilities and

uncertainties.

At roughly equal to 6.626 * 10 ^ of - 34

JW seconds, plank was able to combine

this constant with three other

constants. the speed of light, [music]

Newton's gravitational constant, and

Boltzman's constant to create a system

of reference points for the quantum

world. And these are the plank units. A

plank time of around 10 ^ of - 44

seconds, a plank energy of around 10 ^

of 9, and a plank length of around 10 ^

of - 35 m.

These units tell us that any object,

system, event or occurrence that

approaches [music] these limits will be

affected by the world of the quantum.

And as to what happens when systems

reach the plank limits, nobody knows.

These seem to be the limits of the

universe. Beyond these numbers, quantum

chaos rules and our mathematics does not

allow us to go.

However, we shouldn't worry too much

because we're unlikely to run up against

these limits anytime soon.

The world's most powerful particle

accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider

with a peak design collision energy of

14 terra electron volts, which is 14 *

10 ^ of 12 electron volts. If they

collided a tennis ball with that energy,

it would burn as bright as 100,000

Hiroshimas.