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Why for so long has there been a quest to figure out the smallest unit of matter? I think it's a silly idea in the first place. Nature doesn't work that way. Everything is on a continuum. It's like saying "I found the number closest to infiniti". I think if space is related to matter in the sense that space is matters medium, there will always be a unit of matter small enough (or big enough) to occupy the corresponding amount of space. If matter really has this kind of relationship (which I think it does) to space then saying that you've found the smallest unit of matter is to say you've found the smallest unit of space; and space can be anything greater than 0. Which means you can whip out a more powerful and more powerful ultragigatron microsope and look closer and closer and never find the smallest unit of anything for that matter.

quantized?

on a more serious note, aeora: we know things are quantized, from blackbody radiation, energy levels, light, even mechanical vibrations (apparently the unit of energy for mechanical vibrations is called a phonon). Our world is pretty much digital, there is a smallest fraction of space and a smallest fraction of time, on which to talk about any thing smaller is trivial since particle interactions happen at those distances/times (spacetime distances?) or greater.

The idea of zooming in infinitessimally on a region of space might not mean anything since nothing changes beyond a point, and we're also constrained by the uncertainty principle.

The biggest size would be the size of the universe, and that's expanding, but it's not infinite.

...that's a horrible, terrible, absolutely cynical story. I'd have a word with you if it weren't so appropriate here.

You want to rebel against something? Go with social rebellion. Everyone knows the government doesn't work correctly, that cultural literacy is dropping, that apathy towards issues is increasing, etc. Why do you feel like the people who try as hard as they can to do their research free of governmental or social intervention - the scientists and mathematicians of academia - are the ones who are being sheep?

Considering it'd take more particles that exist in the visible universe to write it down...
How about calculating Ackermann(G, G)?
Or calculating that last digit of Pi...I bet it's 3.


I think the "rebellion" stops being applicable once you're dealing with a mathematical proof. There's no room to argue with a well-made mathematical proof (and that's the base of physics), it's right, and that's all that matters. "Things work in inverse relationship" is just not true, and as such, the cold hard truth is that that sentence is useless as a proof. If things weren't quantized at the smallest level, a quick thing to ponder is Zeno's motion paradox: To travel from A to B, you must first pass by the half-distance between those points. To get to the half distance, you need to get to the 1/4th distance. To get to the 1/4th distance, you need to get to the 1/8th distance. Ad infinitum. If space were infinitely divisible, and there was always a "shorter distance", Zeno concludes that all motion in finite time is impossible, since an infinite number of tasks in a finite number of time is illogical. Now, both the math behind it (the series 1/2n converges) and the physical theory behind it (there are indivisible things) prove him wrong, but of course they didn't exist at his time (albeit these proofs deal with different things).
That's why physics is so heavily math based. If it were just words, then sentences like "things work in inverse relationships" would be considered true statements and be used as proofs, which would lead to, well, lies. The only case when the math behind it can flake, is when we are unsure if the math behind it is what actually happens, or if our modeling is flawed. That's why right now you have a number of different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, and an even larger number of interpretations of string theory.

I'm not saying you are wrong; I am saying that the previous century's developments in physics make the idea of everything being continuous quite unlikely. But, if you have a formal way to make space and time continuous within the Planck limits, then a trip to Stockholm would await you should it be verified.

What Lost Iguana touched on is the heart of the issue. Physics is divided up into two parts, mainly:

Experimental physics, which carefully performs and documents experiment *procedure and outcome*, so as to be able to ascertain - at least at some level - cause-and-effect correlations of the physical world, and

Theoretical physics, which posits axioms about the physical world and attempts to create a consistent logical (mathematical) basis for the explanations of experimental physics. In turn, experimental physics tests and retests the axioms and results of theoretical physics to look for possible flaws in the axioms.

What Lost Iguana said is the entire point of looking at the smaller scale: as of right now, all of our experiments and our absolute best theories are pointing to the quantization of matter (of things in general) on the Planck scale. In order to claim a continuous universe, you'd have to personally create a sound mathematical basis for it which accords with a century of sophisticated experiment and theory, which results in the same predictions of quantum mechanics.