The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

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-1-
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The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by -1- »

At least five "settings" needs to be "set" exactly right, to get the exact universe we live in. The strong force, the weak force, electromagnetism, gravity and light. That's like throwing five dices and getting a 1, 2, 3, 4 and a 5 in the first attempt. That is statistically very improbable, don't you agree? It's much more likely that you'd need dozens of attempts to get it. So logic tell us that, without a creator, there must be many universes with different settings "out there".

There could also only be ours, but that would either require crazy luck, or a creator. And may I remind you that a creator doesn't necessarily need to be eternal or divine. It could be done in an advanced computer by mere mortals.
I call the above reasoning a benign misconception. Neither crazy luck nor a creator is a necessary premise for the foundation of the universe for the way Sommerfeld's Constant played out.

First of all, probabilities in a deterministic universe in which we live in, is only meaningful for estimating reality by humans. Reality is not a dice game; it is a set line of events.

Second of all, even if the Sommerfeld's Constant was not played out like in our universe, the reality would still go on. We don't know how that universe would be structured. Sentient beings could evolve there too, in a form of biology of a strange, strange way to us. Maybe electromagnetism would trump gravity, or the other way around, but a structure of matter would develop. Maybe atoms and molecules would not exist, but other structures would form that help in their humble way form complex structures, similarly to atoms being the basis for chemical complexity which ultimately leads to life forms is in our universe.

Thirdly, we don't know at all what the world would be like if the Sommerfeld's Constant was different. But we must admit that it would be SOMEhow. And a world which is fundamentally different from ours, would still be a world.

Ours just happened to be this way. But other configurations are not impossible, and they don't necessarily indicate that matter would be impossible to exist. And if matter exists, in any form, then it is possible that it would complexify itself in that other "form" also.

I see the panic attack (WHAT IF SOMMERFELD'S CONSTANT WAS DIFFERENT? WE GOTTA RENT OUR CLOTHES AND TEAR OUR HAIR OUT AND EAT IT!!) voiced in the opening quote is yet another form of anthropomorphism. We, humans, make our god like us. Then until better information was available, the world's centre was the Earth, (because man lived here). When things were known to be moving out there in the space, we were convinced they moved around us. When we historically thought of animals vs man, we were convinced there was no way we evolved from them. Until recently most people would not believe that there is life outside our planet.

So this is yet another form of anthropomorphic egotism. It spells that if the universe was not in our form, then there would be Armageddon. Well, that is not right. It is a benign human misconception, again on the same pattern as every other historical human misconception was patterned: Humans are the Alpha and the Omega.
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Noax
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by Noax »

-1- wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 1:10 am Second of all, even if the Sommerfeld's Constant was not played out like in our universe, the reality would still go on. We don't know how that universe would be structured. Sentient beings could evolve there too, in a form of biology of a strange, strange way to us. Maybe electromagnetism would trump gravity, or the other way around, but a structure of matter would develop.
Well that was the point: No structure would exist with random (typical) settings. It's incredibly unlikely. I suppose that some sort of completely different structure might be possible with some other improbable setting, but nobody has discovered one. Most universes would just be a fog of instant heat death, instant collapse, etc.

Your post seems to suggest otherwise, that different setting would result in something merely different, not unworkable.
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by -1- »

Thanks, Noax, for seeing my point. We believe there would be no structure; much like there is no structure in the overwhelming majority of our universe that we know of, that results in movement forms based on the complexity of chemical structures.

However; we don't know what's inside our Sun; what's inside black holes. We assume there is nothing there, structure-wise; but is our assumption valid, necessarily true, or somewhat questionable?

Certainly there is nothing in the centre of the Sun that resembles biochemistry, that's for sure... the molecular structures necessary for that are not able to form in the extreme heat and pressure. But there could be -- and don't ask me for an example, please, my mind is too small to answer my own question's begging -- some structure of some sort.
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Noax
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by Noax »

-1- wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 10:10 am Thanks, Noax, for seeing my point. We believe there would be no structure; much like there is no structure in the overwhelming majority of our universe that we know of, that results in movement forms based on the complexity of chemical structures.
What? There is structure everywhere in this universe. The settings are correct everywhere. Chemistry works. It doesn't with different settings.
However; we don't know what's inside our Sun; what's inside black holes. We assume there is nothing there, structure-wise; but is our assumption valid, necessarily true, or somewhat questionable?
You might assume that. There is very much structure there, and that structure would be absent elsewhere. No stars, no black holes.
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by QuantumT »

-1- wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 1:10 am I call the above reasoning a benign misconception. Neither crazy luck nor a creator is a necessary premise for the foundation of the universe for the way Sommerfeld's Constant played out.
Then you misunderstood me. I only mentioned a creator and crazy luck as alternatives to what I truly believe: That our universe is part of a multiverse.
At least five "settings" needs to be "set" exactly right, to get the exact universe we live in. The strong force, the weak force, electromagnetism, gravity and light. That's like throwing five dices and getting a 1, 2, 3, 4 and a 5 in the first attempt. That is statistically very improbable, don't you agree? It's much more likely that you'd need dozens of attempts to get it. So logic tell us that, without a creator, there must be many universes with different settings "out there".
The alternate universe you describe, where you imagine life emerging from something very different, could be real in a multiverse. So, we actually agree, if you just catch my drift.

In such an alternate universe, however, there would be no stars (and thus no light). Stars (and light) are only possible with the Sommerfeld Constant.
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by -1- »

QuantumT wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 3:13 pm
-1- wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 1:10 am I call the above reasoning a benign misconception. Neither crazy luck nor a creator is a necessary premise for the foundation of the universe for the way Sommerfeld's Constant played out.
Then you misunderstood me. I only mentioned a creator and crazy luck as alternatives to what I truly believe: That our universe is part of a multiverse.
At least five "settings" needs to be "set" exactly right, to get the exact universe we live in. The strong force, the weak force, electromagnetism, gravity and light. That's like throwing five dices and getting a 1, 2, 3, 4 and a 5 in the first attempt. That is statistically very improbable, don't you agree? It's much more likely that you'd need dozens of attempts to get it. So logic tell us that, without a creator, there must be many universes with different settings "out there".
The alternate universe you describe, where you imagine life emerging from something very different, could be real in a multiverse. So, we actually agree, if you just catch my drift.

In such an alternate universe, however, there would be no stars (and thus no light). Stars (and light) are only possible with the Sommerfeld Constant.

I'm glad we are finally agreeing on something. It's one of the few times, if not the first time, that I find agreement with someone else on the boards. I mean, agreement on an esoteric and not fun-fun but serious (non humorous) topic.
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by socrat44 »

Fine Structure Constant Quotes
Quotes tagged as "fine-structure-constant" Showing 1-30 of 73

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fi ... e-constant
=====
socrat44
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Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:20 pm

Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by socrat44 »

“The bridge between the electron and the other elementary particles
is provided by the fine structure constant. ... An expanded form of the
constant leads to equations that define the transformation of
electromagnetic energy into electron mass/energy, ...”
  ― Malcolm H. Mac Gregor,
The Enigmatic Electron: A Doorway to Particle Masses

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fi ... e-constant
===
socrat44
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by socrat44 »

“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.”
― Stephen G. Brush,
Making 20th Century Science: How Theories Became Knowledge

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fi ... ant?page=2
socrat44
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by socrat44 »

“QED [quantum electrodynamics] reduces ... "all of chemistry and most of physics,"
to one basic interaction, the fundamental coupling of a photon to electric charge.
The strength of this coupling remains, however, as a pure number,
the so-called fine-structure constant, which is a parameter of QED
that QED itself is powerless to predict.”
― Frank Wilczek,
Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fi ... ant?page=2
socrat44
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by socrat44 »

“There are considerable mysteries surrounding
the strange values that Nature's actual particles
have for their mass and charge. For example,
there is the unexplained 'fine structure constant' ...
governing the strength of electromagnetic interactions, ....”
― Roger Penrose,
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
#
“If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is
, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [
the vacuum, nothingness], and our task to disentangle the
natural laws would be hopelessly difficult.
The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly
no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation
of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy.”
― Max Born

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fi ... ant?page=3
socrat44
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by socrat44 »

Fine Structure Constant Quotes
Quotes tagged as "fine-structure-constant" Showing 1-30 of 73
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fi ... e-constant
===
  After reading many times all 73 opinions, my conclusion is:
The closest physical analog to the Fine Structure Constant effect is
some kind of '' Butterfly effect '' when very tiny ''quantum butterfly flapping''
makes a very great difference in the Universe on many levels of Existence.
=======
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planetlonely23
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by planetlonely23 »

The question is whether our mind and body can stay in different places in instant of time or can think simultaneously, conscious and thought in different way out of our body, why not other realities and lifes can stay in different spaces at the same time?, in fact that happen because we have other species that live with us on the Earth within other natural places as below grown, water, air..., we now that the gravity is transformed in different way in the space, and we don't know whether other species can live in other spaces out of the Earth, but what is sure in terms of existence might happen with other different matter.
Logik
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Re: The Fine Structure (Sommerfeld's) Constant

Post by Logik »

-1- wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 1:10 am I call the above reasoning a benign misconception. Neither crazy luck nor a creator is a necessary premise for the foundation of the universe for the way Sommerfeld's Constant played out.

First of all, probabilities in a deterministic universe in which we live in, is only meaningful for estimating reality by humans. Reality is not a dice game; it is a set line of events.

Second of all, even if the Sommerfeld's Constant was not played out like in our universe, the reality would still go on. We don't know how that universe would be structured. Sentient beings could evolve there too, in a form of biology of a strange, strange way to us. Maybe electromagnetism would trump gravity, or the other way around, but a structure of matter would develop. Maybe atoms and molecules would not exist, but other structures would form that help in their humble way form complex structures, similarly to atoms being the basis for chemical complexity which ultimately leads to life forms is in our universe.

Thirdly, we don't know at all what the world would be like if the Sommerfeld's Constant was different. But we must admit that it would be SOMEhow. And a world which is fundamentally different from ours, would still be a world.

Ours just happened to be this way. But other configurations are not impossible, and they don't necessarily indicate that matter would be impossible to exist. And if matter exists, in any form, then it is possible that it would complexify itself in that other "form" also.

I see the panic attack (WHAT IF SOMMERFELD'S CONSTANT WAS DIFFERENT? WE GOTTA RENT OUR CLOTHES AND TEAR OUR HAIR OUT AND EAT IT!!) voiced in the opening quote is yet another form of anthropomorphism. We, humans, make our god like us. Then until better information was available, the world's centre was the Earth, (because man lived here). When things were known to be moving out there in the space, we were convinced they moved around us. When we historically thought of animals vs man, we were convinced there was no way we evolved from them. Until recently most people would not believe that there is life outside our planet.

So this is yet another form of anthropomorphic egotism. It spells that if the universe was not in our form, then there would be Armageddon. Well, that is not right. It is a benign human misconception, again on the same pattern as every other historical human misconception was patterned: Humans are the Alpha and the Omega.
This line of reasoning/argumentation has a colloquial name: The Anthropic principle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Another way to interpret it as "Anthropic bias" which is fundamentally why all mind-independent theories of the universe/reality are total bullshit.

I like to see the positive side of things. By being alive - we won the universe lottery.
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