Introduction
With an accuracy of about .32 parts per billion, the fine-structure constant is approximately 7.2973525664(17)x10-3. It is often stated as its reciprocal, which is 137.035999139(31). These figures are estimates from experimental observation and calculation, but the fine-structure constant has not been reduced to a mathematical equation, and thus it retains an element of theoretical mystery to physicists. This is compounded by the contention of some physicists, using powerful current telescopes, that this constant was slightly different billions of years ago.
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History
Arnold Sommerfeld introduced the fine-structure constant in 1916, as part of his theory of the relativistic deviations of atomic spectral lines from the predictions of the Bohr model. The first physical interpretation of the fine-structure constant α was as the ratio of the velocity of the electron in the first circular orbit of the relativistic Bohr atom to the speed of light in the vacuum. Equivalently, it was the quotient between the minimum angular momentum allowed by relativity for a closed orbit, and the minimum angular momentum allowed for it by quantum mechanics. It appears naturally in Sommerfeld's analysis, and determines the size of the splitting or fine-structure of the hydrogenic spectral lines.
Is the Fine-Structure Constant Actually Constant?
Physicists have pondered whether the fine-structure constant is in fact constant, or whether its value differs by location and over time. A varying α has been proposed as a way of solving problems in cosmology and astrophysics. String theory and other proposals for going beyond the Standard Model of particle physics have led to theoretical interest in whether the accepted physical constants (not just α) actually vary.
Feynman on the Fine-Structure Constant
Richard Feynman, one of the originators and early developers of the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), referred to the fine-structure constant in these terms:
With an accuracy of about .32 parts per billion, the fine-structure constant is approximately 7.2973525664(17)x10-3. It is often stated as its reciprocal, which is 137.035999139(31). These figures are estimates from experimental observation and calculation, but the fine-structure constant has not been reduced to a mathematical equation, and thus it retains an element of theoretical mystery to physicists. This is compounded by the contention of some physicists, using powerful current telescopes, that this constant was slightly different billions of years ago.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
History
Arnold Sommerfeld introduced the fine-structure constant in 1916, as part of his theory of the relativistic deviations of atomic spectral lines from the predictions of the Bohr model. The first physical interpretation of the fine-structure constant α was as the ratio of the velocity of the electron in the first circular orbit of the relativistic Bohr atom to the speed of light in the vacuum. Equivalently, it was the quotient between the minimum angular momentum allowed by relativity for a closed orbit, and the minimum angular momentum allowed for it by quantum mechanics. It appears naturally in Sommerfeld's analysis, and determines the size of the splitting or fine-structure of the hydrogenic spectral lines.
Is the Fine-Structure Constant Actually Constant?
Physicists have pondered whether the fine-structure constant is in fact constant, or whether its value differs by location and over time. A varying α has been proposed as a way of solving problems in cosmology and astrophysics. String theory and other proposals for going beyond the Standard Model of particle physics have led to theoretical interest in whether the accepted physical constants (not just α) actually vary.
Feynman on the Fine-Structure Constant
Richard Feynman, one of the originators and early developers of the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), referred to the fine-structure constant in these terms:
There is a most profound and
beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e –
the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a
simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to
0.08542455. (My physicist friends won't recognize this number, because they
like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an
uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever
since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical
physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately
you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it
related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It's
one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us
with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote
that number, and "we don't know how He pushed his pencil." We know
what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very
accurately, but we don't know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make
this number come out, without putting it in secretly!
— Richard P. Feynman (1985). QED: The Strange
Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton
University
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