black holes - How to get Planck length

I know that what Planck length equals to.

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   The first question is, how do you get the formula $$\ell_P~=~\sqrt\frac{\hbar G}{c^3}$$ that describes the Planck length?

   
   


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   The second question is, will any length shorter than the Planck length be inaccessible? If so, what is the reason behind this?

   
   

Answer

The expression $(\hbar G/c^3)^{1/2}$ is the unique product of powers of $\hbar, G,c$, three most universal dimensionful constants, that has the unit of length. Because the constants $\hbar, G,c$ describe the fundamental processes of quantum mechanics, gravity, and special relativity, respectively, the length scale obtained in this way expresses the typical length scale of processes that depend on relativistic quantum gravity.

The formula and the value were already known to Max Planck more than 100 years ago, that's why they're called Planck units.

Unless there are very large or strangely warped extra dimensions in our spacetime, the Planck length is the minimum length scale that may be assigned the usual physical and geometric interpretation. (And even if there are subtleties coming from large or warped extra dimensions, the minimum length scale that makes sense – which could be different from $10^{-35}$ meters, however – may still be called a higher-dimensional Planck length and is calculated by analogous formulae which must, however, use the relevant Newton's constant that applies to a higher-dimensional world.) The Planck length's special role may be expressed by many related definitions, for example:

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  The Planck length is the radius of the smallest black hole that (marginally) obeys the laws of general relativity. Note that if the black hole radius is $R=(\hbar G/c^3)^{1/2}$, the black hole mass is obtained from $R=2GM/c^2$ i.e. $M=c^2/G\cdot (\hbar G/c^3)^{1/2} = (\hbar c/G)^{1/2}$ which is the same thing as the Compton wavelength $\lambda = h/Mc = hG/c^3 (\hbar G/c^3)^{-1/2}$ of the same object, up to numerical factors such as $2$ and $\pi$. The time it takes for such a black hole to evaporate by the Hawking radiation is also equal to the Planck time i.e. Planck length divided by the speed of light. Smaller (lighter) black holes don't behave as black holes at all; they are elementary particles (and the lifetime shorter than the Planck time is a sign that you can't trust general relativity for such supertiny objects). Larger black holes than the Planck length increasingly behave as long-lived black holes that we know from astrophysics.

  
  


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  The Planck length is the distance at which the quantum uncertainty of the distance becomes of order 100 percent, up to a coefficient of order one. This may be calculated by various approximate calculations rooted in quantum field theory – expectation values of $(\delta x)^2$ coming from quantum fluctuations of the metric tensor; higher-derivative corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action; nonlocal phenomena, and so on.

  
  

The unusual corrections to the geometry, including nonlocal phenomena, become so strong at distances that are formally shorter than the Planck length that it doesn't make sense to consider any shorter distances. The usual rules of geometry would break down over there. The Planck length or so is also the shortest distance scale that can be probed by accelerators, even in principle. If one were increasing the energy of protons at the LHC and picked a collider of the radius comparable to the Universe, the wavelength of the protons would be getting shorter inversely proportionally to the protons' energy. However, once the protons' center-of-mass energy reaches the Planck scale, one starts to produce the "minimal black holes" mentioned above. A subsequent increase of the energy will end up with larger black holes that have a worse resolution, not better. So the Planck length is the minimum distance one may probe.

It's important to mention that we're talking about the internal architecture of particles and objects. Many other quantities that have units of length may be much shorter than the Planck length. For example, the photon's wavelength may obviously be arbitrarily short: any photon may always be boosted, as special relativity guarantees, so that its wavelength gets even shorter.

Lots of things (insights from thousands of papers by some of the world's best physicists) are known about the Planck scale physics, especially some qualitative features of it, regardless of the experimental inaccessibility of that realm.