So I have a question that perhaps someone smarter than me could

>>8716368

Don't expect smarter here. You will get a lot of smugger and snottier. Full of BSs that can't even butter their own toast.

>>8716368
Well photons do have a fixed size. So you could only keep zooming up until you reach that size.

>>8716395
Bullshit, you could look at it from a perspective of being smaller than it too, given a transcending method of observation.

>>8716395
This is true for visible light microscopes, which is why we have electron microscopes. AFAI understand the physics, the highest resolution you can achieve is the particle size of your carrier medium. Someone shoot me down, I'm in free-fall BS mode.

>>8716395
Increasing the frequency of a photon allows it to probe even smaller because it has a smaller amplitude.

Increasing frequency also increases the energy it contains though and at some point giving it enough energy would cause it to form into a black hole, the amplitude associated with a photon of this exact frequency is the Planck length, which is the smallest possible length we can probe, To answer OPs question.

>>8716368
Magnification of what exactly? We see things via light reflecting off the object and receptors in our eyes reacting to that light. We use microscopes to take light from one spot and spread it out. At a certain point below the wavelength of the light you're using this stops working because the inherent diffraction of light distorts the image. So you need to use smaller wavelengths of light which are not visible to the human eye, translating x-rays or UV rays into images. Then you have to start using electrons which have even shorter wavelengths than light. Once you get down to the subatomic scale of the coin, the entire concept of sight breaks down. There is nothing to bounce light or something like it off of. So the question depends on what you mean by "zoom in"

>>8716416

I wasn't thinking about it in those terms, but I think you are spot on by raising this point. I wasn't considering that the human eye has perceptive limitations.

I was thinking about the problem kind of in a purely philosophical way. But in the same way that humans can never observe cosmic radiation from the time of the big bang since it is moving away so quickly, thus making it totally unknowable to us - the same principle must apply to the question of magnification beyond the human limit of perception.

>>8716368
>leave the realm of matter and get into weirdo energy quantum shit.
The "weirdo energy quantum shit" is the "basement magnification".

Quantum mechanics is all about the limitations of observation of microscopic systems. If you want to understand the full answer to your question, take a course in that.

The short version is that past a certain scale, there's no known way (no way permitted by established physical theory, let alone a developed practical method) to zoom in further and maintain a crisp image. It just gets blurry and unclear.

The long version involves headache-inducing arguments over whether things like electrons, photons, and atomic nuclei really even *have* a precise location, or are actually, fundamentally blurry things somehow. Note that I say "arguments", because there aren't good answers on these sorts of points. Some even claim that they're unscientific questions to ask.

But yeah: there's a limit, and then it's just a blur.

>>8716401
>Increasing the frequency of a photon allows it to probe even smaller because it has a smaller amplitude.

What. This is completely wrong. The amplitude of light is literally the mount of photons present.

>To answer OPs question.

You didn't answer the question at all. To create a black hole from light would require all the light from the sun to be focused down to a spot size smaller than an atom. It has nothing to do with limits of magnification and resolution.

>>8716455
>The "weirdo energy quantum shit" is the "basement magnification".

No. Not true at all. The resolution is fundamentally limited by the diffraction limit which can be completely described using classical diffraction theory. Not the uncertainty principle.

>>8716666
>No. Not true at all. The resolution is fundamentally limited by the diffraction limit
Not every kind of microscope even involves diffraction. OP wasn't talking about a particular microscope design.

>>8716684
>Not every kind of microscope even involves diffraction

Yes it does. Every. Single. One.

>>8716666
>This is completely wrong. The amplitude of light is literally the mount of photons present.

Quads wasted on this brainlet.

He was obviously talking about the EM wave amplitude

>>8716700
Okay, you explain to me where the diffraction is in a scanning tunneling microscope.

>>8716368
Depends whether were talking about detection or actually seeing something.

In terms of detection, anything that reacts to alpha particles, beta particles, and electrons.

In terms of seeing: anything of the size of an electron that does not react by being bombarded with electrons.

There is no known base units of anything.

The closest you will get are quarks leptons and bosons, which make up subatomic particles like protons and electrons.

>>8716711
So was previous anon correct that if you increase the energy of a photon it gets smaller (amplitude?) It seems counter intuitive, more energy should make something vibrate more or just...be bigger...

>>8717214
>if you increase the energy of a photon it gets smaller (amplitude?)
Wavelength gets smaller, yes.

If you use "amplitude" to mean "physical width", like you're picturing a photon as a squiggly line, wavelength is probably the closest you'll get to it.

However, that's not a standard usage of "amplitude" in regards to EM waves, and "amplitude" is not normally used at all in reference to single photons. It would create confusion, and you only need one of energy, frequency, or wavelength (they are interconvertable) to fully describe the scalar properties of a photon.

>>8717214
The amplitude is just a constant based on initial conditions.

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>>8716368
Planck length
1.6 e-35m

Pretty simple really