63 Quotes About Fine-structure-constant

The significance of [the fine-structure constant] goes far beyond atomic physics, however. It is the smallness of 1/137 compared to unity that enables us to treat the coupling between the electromagnetic field and a charged particle such as an electron as a small perturbation, a fact of great computational importance. [Forces of Nature]

Alpha sets the scale of nature -- the size of atoms and all things made of them, the intensity and colors of light, the strength of magnetism, and the metabolic rate of life itself. It controls everything that we see. ... In 137, apparently, science had found Nature's PIN Code.

Arnold Sommerfeld generalized Bohr's model to include elliptical orbits in three dimensions. He treated the problem relativistically (using Einstein's formula for the increase of mass with velocity), ... According to historian Max Jammer, this success of Sommerfeld's fine-structure formula "served also as an indirect confirmation of Einstein's relativistic formula for the velocity dependence of inertia mass.

[The fine structure constant] ... defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. Its value controls the power from the Sun and, more sensitively, how stars transmute hydrogen into all the atoms of the periodic table.

At his "World of Physics" Web site, Eric W. Weisstein notes that the fine structure constant continues to fascinate numerologists, who have claimed that connections exist between alpha, the Cheops pyramid, and Stonehenge!

The fine structure constant is undoubtedly the most fundamental pure (dimensionless) number in all of physics. It relates the basic constants of electromagnetism (the charge of the electron), relativity (the speed of light), and quantum mechanics (Planck's constant).

We have found that the values of the constants of nature have not been fine-tuned for life by accident, but that these values are constrained by and logically follow from the fundamental space-time organization of the Cosmic Tree of Life.

Alpha, known as the fine-structure constant, characterizes the interactions between matter and light. It has been very accurately measured in the laboratory. It is indeed the most precisely measured of all physical constants ... best memorized in the form ~ 1/137.

The measured magnetic moment, together with fine structure constant determined by a different method, is the most stringent test of QED and the Standard Model of particle physics. The measured magnetic moment and QED theory together yield the most precise measured value of the fine structure constant.