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Quote by Paul Davies

“God is a pure mathematician!' declared British astronomer Sir James Jeans. The physical Universe does seem to be organised around elegant mathematical relationships. And one number above all others has exercised an enduring fascination for physicists: 137.0359991.... It is known as the fine-structure constant and is denoted by the Greek letter alpha (α).”

Quote by Paul Davies

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Paul Davies
Paul Davies

Paul Davies, born April 22, 1946, is a British theoretical physicist, cosmologist and prolific science writer. After earning his PhD at Cambridge, he held faculty positions at Oxford, UC San Diego and the Australian National University, focusing on cosmology, quantum gravity, black‑hole thermodynamics and the physics of life's origins. Known for his interdisciplinary outlook and clear popular‑science books such as "The Mind of God" and "The Goldilocks Enigma," Davies has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society and Fellow of the American Physical Society. His research advances fundamental physics, while his outreach has shaped public understanding of the universe and its deeper philosophical implications. more

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“Now let us analyze the other two occupants of the inner Sanctuary or Oracle. They are the two cherubim who guard the Ark ... [and] "The Molten Sea" ...There are also two other elements of the Temple of which they are the image, and these other two units are the Great Pyramid and the Inner Court (The Molten Sea = 137 = MG = Two Cherubim = Great Pyramid = Inner Court. All four of these elements are reflections of each other, and they constitute the real key to understanding the mystery of the Temple of Solomon. ..."The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord" [is] a mirror image of "The Great Pyramid of the Emperor" ....”

“A good example of the archetypal ideas which the archetypes produce are natural numbers or integers. With the aid of the integers the shaping and ordering of our experiences becomes exact. Another example is mathematical group theory. ...important applications of group theory are symmetries which can be found in most different connections both in nature and among the 'artifacts' produced by human beings. Group theory also has important applications in mathematics and mathematical physics. For example, the theory of elementary particles and their interactions can in essential respects be reduced to abstract symmetries. [The Message of the Atoms: Essays on Wolfgang Pauli and the Unspeakable]”

“The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century. Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity. We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology.”

“The power of the deductive network produced in physics has been illustrated in a delightful article by Victor F. Weisskopf. He begins by taking the magnitudes of six physical constants known by measurement: the mass of the proton, the mass and electric charge of the electron, the light velocity, Newton's gravitational constant, and the quantum of action of Planck. He adds three of four fundamental laws (e.g., de Broglie's relations connecting particle momentum and particle energy with the wavelength and frequency, and the Pauli exclusion principle), and shows that one can then derive a host of different, apparently quite unconnected, facts that happen to be known to us by observation separately ....”

“One of the most curious of these stories about Pauli concerns the number 137. One of the great unsolved mysteries of modern physics is the value of the fine structure constant, for while the other fundamental constants of nature are all immensely small or enormously large, this fine structure constant 1/137 turns out to be a human-sized number. This number 137 and its place in the scale of the universe particularly puzzled Pauli and continues to challenge physicists today. I was a mystery that Pauli was to take to his death, for on being admitted into the hospital, the physicist was told that he was being put into room 137. According to one version of this story on learning of his room number, Pauli said, "I will never get out of here." The physicist died shortly after.”

“We present a series of hypotheses and speculations, leading inescapably to the conclusion that SU(5) is the gauge group of the world — that all elementary particle forces (strong, weak, and electromagnetic) are different manifestations of the same fundamental interaction involving a single coupling strength, the fine-structure constant. Our hypotheses may be wrong and our speculations idle, but the uniqueness and simplicity of our scheme are reasons enough that it be taken seriously.”

“True, the Standard Model does explain a very great deal. Nevertheless it is not yet a proper theory, principally because it does not satisfy the physicists naive faith in elegance and simplicity. It involves some 17 allegedly fundamental particles and the same number of arbitrary and tunable parameters, such as the fine-structure constants, the muon-electron mass ratio and the various mysterious mixing angles.”

“To calculate 'the' fine structure constant, 1/137, we would need a realistic model of just about everything, and this we do not have. In this talk I want to return to the old question of what it is that determines gauge couplings in general, and try to prepare the ground for a future realistic calculation.”