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The End of Space and Time: Biggest Physics Problem
Planck length.
A trillion trillion times smaller than an atom.
It’s the smallest scale at which anything makes sense. And yet, it’s where everything we know about physics breaks down.
Space-time — the very stage on which reality plays out — dissolves into chaos when we try to look closer.
What does this mean? That our entire understanding of the universe is incomplete. That quantum mechanics and general relativity — our best theories of reality — are missing something fundamental.
If we want to uncover the deepest layers of existence, we have to ask some uncomfortable questions:
- Is space-time even real?
- Do “where” and “when” even make sense at the quantum level?
- What if reality is just an illusion projected from a deeper truth?
And if so — what comes next?
Let’s start at the beginning.
The Illusion of Space and Time
In 1637, René Descartes imagined space as a mathematical grid.
A few decades later, Isaac Newton did the same with time. They thought of these as absolute and unchanging.
Then Einstein showed up.
His first revelation? Time is relative.
The way you experience time depends on your motion. Space and time weren’t separate — they were part of the same thing: space-time.
But even Einstein’s theory was just the beginning.
- He showed that gravity isn’t a force — it’s the curvature of space-time itself.
- He built a framework where mass bends the very fabric of reality like a heavy ball on a trampoline.
It was brilliant. But there was a problem.
His equations worked everywhere — except at the extremes.
Singularities. Black holes. The Big Bang.
Places where gravity becomes infinite, space-time crumbles, and the laws of physics collapse into nonsense.
This is where we need quantum mechanics.
