can space and time be quantized?

[mygumballs]

if an atom can only have discrete energy states that require a quantized amount of energy to be absorbed or radiated, then wouldn't there have to be a quantized amount of time for this tranfer of energy to take place? the atom can't have transfered a portion of that energy at half of that time because then it wouldn't be quantized energy since there is an energy state low than itself.


i've also heard that mom(mother nature) allows the conservation of energy and uncertainty principles to be broken every so often, as long as it's within extremely short periods of time. could this be part of the answer?

 

[imgod2u]

Well, so far we've not been able to quantize time. It seems that in any experiment, you can always do something faster or slower. The only way we would tell if time was quantized would be if there got to a point where you couldn't do something any faster and not hit the relativistic barrier. That is, you can't have a packet of time be any smaller. Since relativity states that if you get to the speed of light, time will stop for you, that would mean that time is capable of being infinitely small, meaning there is no quantization.

As for breaking the conservation of energy and momentum, that would be quantum flux. It's based on the Uncertainty Principle which states that the exact position and momentum of a point can never be known (or certain). Which has the consequence of meaning that you can't have a specific state at any given point in spacetime. If you can't have a specific state (it is at x position with y momentum), then you can't be sure of how much energy it has, which also means it can have a random amount of energy. This violates many laws of physics including conservation of energy and momentum. However, this only happens on a very small scale, so in macro-objects (large size), conservation of energy still applies. Also, this random appearance of energy is also accompanied by random dissappearance of energy, so it sorta balances itself out.