I've been in a philosophical kind of mood as of late, and I've been pondering this question/concept for the past few days and I've love to hear others' thoughts and ideas on it. Not really a right or wrong answer to this, just something interesting to think about.
So The Planck length, 1.616199(97)×10− to the 35 is the smallest unit of measurement that we (or rather science I guess) deem as being realistically measurable, anything beyond which smaller unit would seem ludicrous and to some degree redundant.
It got me thinking about gain in an audio chain. Such as, using a mixer in front of a recorder to give yourself greater S/N to work with in quiet environments. If one were to, say, daisychain 100 (or even more) Sound Devices pres (or any other top-tier pres for that matter) to maximize available gain, how quiet of a sound could be picked up? What sort of noise or harmonics might be "capturable"? How about considering this realistically (considering the mic self noise, environment, etc) versus theoretical (mic has no self noise, environment is undisturbed quiet, etc)? Would it reach a threshold or tipping point at which greater noise would be introduced/summed than the gain availability we're creating for ourselves to begin with when daisychaining in more gain (sort of how zipping an MP3 makes it larger rather than smaller)? And furthermore, how does the cosmic radiation background (white noise, 'sound' of cooling photons which is still being electromagnetically picked up) play into this and does it set some sort of threshold precedent? I'm considering this question with the understanding as well that we're talking about proper gain staging, not running each pre at 100%
I'd love to hear thoughts and discussion on this, if anyone has science to share on it, I'd also love to hear as well. Sort of an out there topic but it's one which has had my mind pondering for some time.