Electronics is really an applied branch of physics, so it isn’t surprising that if you are serious about your electronics, you probably know a little physics, too. If you’ve ever heard the term “fine ...

A new measurement of the fine-structure constant is three times more accurate than before. The constant helps glue together "coarse" and "fine" measurement of particles. The new measurement bests a ...

One of the most exciting prospects in physics has been discovering that fundamental constants are not actually constant at all. When I first started writing, physicists and astronomers were just ...

A crucial number that rules the universe goes big in a strange quantum material. The fine-structure constant is about 10 times its normal value in a type of material called quantum spin ice, ...

Even on a black hole’s turf, an essential constant of nature holds steady. According to standard physics, the fine-structure constant, which governs interactions of electrically charged particles, is ...

In sports and in cosmology, the rules of the game aren't supposed to change as you go along. Athletes call this playing fair. Cosmologists call it the cosmological principle, and it means that the ...

In physics, the Fine Structure Constant is one the strangest numbers. The Fine Structure Constant is one the strangest numbers in all of physics. It’s the job of physicists to worry about numbers, but ...

Holger Müller is in the Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. However, the recoil energy is tiny and therefore hard to measure. Laser-based ...

I'm disappointed that you didn't point out the spooky coincidence: that alpha (the fine structure constant) is e^2/4πε0ħ, is unitless, and is frighteningly close to 1/137. alpha = 0.007 297 352 1/137 ...