constants r fun

200 points · 24 comments · view on lemmy.world

24 Comments

Deme@sopuli.xyz · 62 pts · 241d (3 replies)

So the dent in the ground is a perfect fit for the puddle that formed in it?!

bleistift2@sopuli.xyz · 10 pts · 241d (1 reply)

Remind me where that quote is from

Deme@sopuli.xyz · 23 pts · 241d

The puddle analogy by Douglas Adams

andros_rex@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 240d

Still interesting to ask about that dent’s shape. We could think about how the chemistry of the material composing it/the way it weathered, or approach it as a micro biome where an entire ecological niche is carved out around going from rain puddle to rain puddle. If the puddle is in concrete, we can talk about issues of equity - do some neighborhoods have different shapes of puddle (eg, how well does the city maintain different neighborhood’s infrastructure.)

We can accept that the outlines of our puddle are stochastic and arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean we can’t marvel at tracing out its shape.

ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 39 pts · 241d (6 replies)
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vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 29 pts · 241d (2 replies)

Particles do not stick to each other. The universe is just a goo organized solely by gravity

Edit: The grey area is deuterium (H2) instability region

gbzm@piefed.social · 17 pts · 241d (1 reply)

Nope, that's the red strip on the left.

https://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1283

vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 10 pts · 241d

Though I was just guessing, I was pretty close to the truth. The grey area is deuterium (H2) instability region, which basically means that there are no to few molecules in the goo

abbadon420@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 241d

Thoughts and prayers

airbreather@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 241d

That's beyond our borders. You must never go there, Simba.

ryannathans@aussie.zone · 4 pts · 241d

This

dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 26 pts · 241d (1 reply)

Reminds me of the album cover for We Are Here by Apparatjik

SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 11 pts · 240d

That's a diagram from the same article, actually

Sibbo@sopuli.xyz · 26 pts · 241d (3 replies)

Source or additional explanation?

Sarothazrom@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 241d (1 reply)

Has to do with the precise strength of the Strong Nuclear Force's ability to form the atoms we know.

If it were even a little bit different, the entire universe would be a lot bit different.

trolololol@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 240d

A lot bit different

Found the bri'ish

gbzm@piefed.social · 11 pts · 241d
gbzm@piefed.social · 17 pts · 241d

Reverse image search gave this pop-sci article from 2009:

https://arxiv.org/abs/0905.1283

Slightly different though. No grey part, though the legend argues that deutérium is unstable below the horizontal line, and "We are here" in smaller font

nialv7@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 241d

are we that good at going from fundamental laws to what actually will happen in the macro world? e.g. we can't even figure out why certain materials are superconductive at high temperatures.

so i doubt the counterfactual presented in this graph is accurate. we just know if the coupling constant is different the universe will look completely different, but we would have no idea if intelligent life could still arise.

lemming@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 241d

I know some people don't, but I kind of like weak anthropic principle, if you take it as a reason and not an explanation. The only universe that can contain someone trying to figure the universe out must be in the white region (as far as we know).

Kaput@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 241d

Since I came to term with my limited capacity to understand those mathematics. I've decided to enjoy it like the match selling little girl that ate stale bread while smelling the roast. Based on this very remote understanding of the matter, My theory is that all those possible universes are actually just one and that what we are observing or experiencing is the part we are tuned to. Like a radio receiving all the waves but being tuned to a single channel.

davidgro@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 241d (1 reply)

Can those values actually go above 1 even in theory?

mumblerfish@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 241d

Well... The effecrive coupling constant changes with energy. A high energy experiment behaves differently than at lower energies. The coupling constant is above 1 for the strong force at low energies, but there is 'asymptotic freedom' which makes it below 1 at high energies. For EM it is always below 1. I would guess they reference a 'bare' value here.

The purpose of these graphs are not how they look in our universe though. Rather a common way of doing anthropic style arguments. Without measuring the value of the constants, from the graph we can know from just knowing there are stable carbon and non-relativistic atoms pretty exactly where the values of the constants must be. Similar arguments can be used to pinpoint the cosmological constant from the existance of galaxies.

montechristo@feddit.org · 2 pts · 241d

To even think that there are universes where we can't stop after second order perturbation theory in the fine structure constant. Scary thought.

psud@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 236d

This is not very enticing as an idea — that something special happened to have this universe just right — as we really don't know whether there were unsuccessful universes before ours, we don't know what happened before the big bang that created our universe

There could be good reasons we don't know of that forces all the constants to be as they are. The dice could have been cast many times before. We can't know. This idea doesn't help