The idealized picture of space and time in general relativity assigns an ideal clock to each point in space, which tick evenly without being influenced by the nearby clocks. However, when quantum mechanical and gravitational effects are taken into account, this picture is no longer tenable, as the clocks mutually disturb each other and hands of the clocks become "fuzzy" (Copyright: Flaminia Giacomini, Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna).
When measuring time, we normally assume that clocks do not affect space and time, and that time can be measured with infinite accuracy at nearby points in space. However, combining quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of general relativity theoretical physicists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have demonstrated a fundamental limitation for our ability to measure time. The more precise a given clock is, the more it "blurs" the flow of time measured by neighbouring clocks. As a consequence, the time shown by the clocks is no longer well defined. In everyday life we are used to the idea that properties of an object can be known to an arbitrary precision. However, in quantum mechanics, one of the major theories in modern physics, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle asserts a fundamental limit to the precision with which pairs of physical properties can be known, such as the energy and time of a clock. The more precise the clock is, the larger is the uncertainty in its energy.
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