The fundamental constants of nature

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Saith, Dec 26, 2004.

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  1. Saith Registered Senior Member

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    I watched a show on String Theory and M Theory recently. It said this:

    "Scientists have found that there are about 20 numbers. Twenty fundamental constants of nature, that give the universe the characteristics we see today. These are numbers like how much an electron weighs, the strength of gravity, the electromagnetic force and the strong and weak forces."

    What are the rest of these numbers?
     
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  3. mercurio 9th dan seppuku sensei Registered Senior Member

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    26, actually:

    the mass of the up quark
    the mass of the down quark
    the mass of the charmed quark
    the mass of the strange quark
    the mass of the top quark
    the mass of the bottom quark
    4 numbers for the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix

    the mass of the electron
    the mass of the electron neutrino
    the mass of the muon
    the mass of the mu neutrino
    the mass of the tau
    the mass of the tau neutrino
    4 numbers for the Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix

    the mass of the Higgs boson
    the expectation value of the Higgs field

    the U(1) coupling constant
    the SU(2) coupling constant
    the strong coupling constant

    the cosmological constant

    http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/constants.html

    John Baez is a good source on such stuff btw. Deep (and I mean really) yet readable.
     
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  5. Saith Registered Senior Member

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  7. mercurio 9th dan seppuku sensei Registered Senior Member

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    Another source, I think somewhat more frowned upon by the more rigid crowd, but one that I find quite illuminating at times is John. D. Barrow:

    http://www.hypography.com/article.cfm?id=32630

    Totally cool book, and you might wish to look at others by him. Deep into math and cosmology, and the only person I know who took the trouble of putting stuff into simple tables, so any fool can see that electromagnetism only works in 3 dimensions (or one, but that's useless).

    Pretty good at explaining stuff, in short, and is the funniest quoter in the business. I sometimes really don't know where he gets them from, and I'm a collector of quotes myself....

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  8. Lava Let discovery flow Registered Senior Member

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    The fundamental constants of nature:

    greed
    selfishness
    hostility
    hate
    war
    death
    taxes
    scams
    and the biggest one of all has to be: bullshit.


    Lava
     
  9. mercurio 9th dan seppuku sensei Registered Senior Member

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    Nothing reincarnation won't cure, my friend.
     
  10. Lava Let discovery flow Registered Senior Member

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    It hasnt cured it yet...
     
  11. mercurio 9th dan seppuku sensei Registered Senior Member

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    Well, keep trying...

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    BTW, let's not confuse constants with fundamentals.

    Positive and negative are fundamentals. One man's luck is another's nightmare.
    But since the universe is suspected to be one thing, both by mystics and scientists, we're doing it quite literally to ourselves, any which way you look at it, so complaining does not really help, or change things.

    Maybe only a bit of fairness, and giving the other guy a decent break could remedy that. Economists should pick up a book about zero sum games, and all that. Even Johnny von Neumann had a fair economy worked out, but they are still scratching their heads over that. Economists' math is generally very poor, or they'd be econometrists.

    Pays better, too.
     
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