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Max Plank (1858 – 1947) was an influential German physicist whose contributions to quantum mechanics helped launch a revolution in science between 1900 and 1930.

Using Boltzmann's statistical mechanics and the concept of energy quantization, Planck was the first person to explain a phenomenon of quantum theory (black-body radiation). This discovery helped him to come up with a new system of measurement. One such measure is called the Plank time (tP), which is a unit of time expressed by the system of natural units known as Planck units. The interval of time associated with this unit is twenty-six orders of magnitude smaller than the current limit of observation, the attosecond (10^26 Plank times).

The progress of dimensional analysis in physics suggests that a working theory of quantum gravity, wherein the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity would be made, will allow us to understand particle interactions occurring at time intervals associated with the Plank time. However, not a single person has been able to produce a Theory of Quantum Gravity whose predictions agree with experimental evidence. Up until his death in 1955, Einstein spent many years of his life working on this problem. A solution to this problem has proven to be so elusive and difficult, that it has been at the forefront of science for the past seven decades.


More speculative theories have called into existence quantum gravity "foam" where there are space-time fluctuations occurring on the Planck scale. This predicts that images of extremely distant objects, such as red-shifted galaxies and quasars, should be blurry. Although this prediction has not yet been proven by observation, which was shown by experiments conducted by the Hubble space telescope in 2003, these observations have lead to a debate about the physical implications of the Planck time as a physical minimum time interval. However, it was determined that "the cumulative effects of space-time fluctuations on the phase coherence of light [in certain theories of 'foamy' space-time:] are too small to be observable."

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The main problem is that the mathematics of general relativity and quantum mechanics cease to cooperate when it comes to explaining each other’s properties. Efforts to describe gravity (what gives particles mass?) have proven particularly frustrating for both theories. For example, the gravitational and electrical force (phenomena which are magnetic in nature), differ in strength by about 39 orders of magnitude, with the latter being the stronger. This explains why the forces holding together the molecules of our bodies do not dissolve when subjected to the downward pull of earth's entire mass of approximately 5.9742 × 10^15 teragrams.

Without a Theory that unifies the concepts of general relativity and quantum mechanics, these observations cannot be explained. However, recent events suggest progress in this area. By smashing particles together at very high speeds (close to the speed of light), the 27 km, ~9 billion dollar CERN experiment (LHC) straddling the Franco-Swiss border has been actively involved in trying to unlock this mystery. The main goal of the scientists working there is to give us a more detailed description of quantum mechanics by recreating conditions that haven't been seen since the Big Bang-roughly 13.3 to 13.9 billion years ago. This would give us more clues about the origin of the universe, and might even allow us to construct real X-wing spacecraft, which has been the main goal of science all along.