May 19, 2004

A Brief Moment in Life

As part of my work at HCJB, I'm studying up on digital audio. Here's a quote from the book I spent yesterday perusing.

"Before ending our discussion of discrete time samplng, consider a hypothesis concerning the nature of time. Time seems to be continuous. However, some physicists have suggested that, like energy and matter, time might come in discrete packets. Just as this book consists of a finite number of atoms and could be converted to a finite amount of energy, the time it takes you to read this book might consist of a finite number of time particles. Specifically, the indivisible period of time might be 1 x 10^-42. The theory is that no time interval can be shorter than this because the energy required to make the division would be so great that a black hole would be created and the event would be swallowed up inside it. If any of you out there are experimenting in your basements with very fast sampling frequencies, please be careful."
- Principles of Digital Audio, Third Edition
Ken C. Pohlmann

I think Dr. Graff is in serious danger. Perhaps we ought to warn him...

Posted by Moore at May 19, 2004 08:50 AM