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smaller), protons are 10° m large (one million times smaller) and elec- trons and quarks are 10°“ m large. The latter are therefore one thousand billion times smaller than our eyes can see. So imagine what the Planck length" represents the smallest theoret- ical physical scale approximately the size of 10° m. It is one hundred billion billion billion times smaller than what we can see. Can we still say: “I believe only what I can see?’”’. Even quarks, the smallest elemen- tary particles, are still one hundred million billion times larger than the Planck scale. If a quark is as big as a soccer field, a neutron is the size of Earth and the first electron, which is also as big as a soccer field, would be larger than the sun. Despite this huge magnification, the Planck length would still be invisible. Infinitely small, infinitely big? We are still influenced by the visual! We are still influenced by the three-dimensionality of space that we believe to be reality. However, what does infinitely long mean? What is infinitely short? What is the present? What if we used only time varia- tions to understand the universe from now on? Fundamentally, that is what this book invites you to do. Planck time”, supposedly the shortest time interval in existence, is a mathematic deduction of the Planck length. By dividing the Planck length by light speed c we obtain the value of Planck time. Once again, to grasp its extreme smallness, some- thing as elusive as a flash of lightning in a stormy sky lasts one hundred billion billion billion billion (one and thirty-seven zeros) times longer than this infinitesimal length of time. The instruction time of the world’s fastest computers is barely one hundred times shorter than a flash of lightning. Even the switching time of a transistor (one picosecond, 10% second) is an eternity compared to Planck time. While our mind is quite capable of imagining space differences by relating back the proportions to our scale, it is impossible for us to picture time differences, because our human life is a pretty poor standard. If Planck time represents one second on our watch, the flash of lightning of a thunderstorm lasts — brace yourself — one thousand billion billion billion centuries.'* Surely wets ato 1 wea many events may occur in this eternal interval, which is incommensu- rably longer than the presumed age of the universe. Worlds may appear and disappear billions of times. Life and death would inevitably seem 7 roa 2 toad 1 a simultaneous. Is this not what happens in our dreams? It is not so much the idea that space does not have a reality that blinds us, but the idea that space describes the world. The world is defined by exchange. An exchange consists in the motion followed by information sent from an emitter to a receiver...when they are different! This motion is segmented into iterative quantities, hence the integral function. 46 The Science of Extraterrestrials: UFOs Explained at Last * Eric Julien