Quotes About Constants

Laws of physics aside, there are no universal constants, so separating the predictable from the unpredictable is difficult work. There's no way around it.

The opinion seems to have got abroad, that in a few years all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another place of decimals.

In a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.

Everything is physics and math.

Hard-nosed physicists say that the six knobs were never free to vary in the first place. When we finally reach the long-hoped-for Theory of Everything, we shall see that the six key numbers depend upon each other, or on something else as yet unknown, in ways that we today cannot imagine. The six numbers may turn out to be no freer to vary than is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It will turn out that there is only one way for a universe to be.

To geologists, it's death, taxes, and climate change that are the true constants of life on Earth.

Normal persons deprived of sensation progress from having mild to severe hallucinations, starting out with what looks very much like form constants (geometric patterns, mosaics, lines, rows of dots) and building to more developed, dream-like juxtapositions of perceptions the longer they remain in isolation.

If gravity were somewhat stronger or weaker, stars wouldn't exist, and neither would you. And the same can be said of other constants of physics. Several have to be 'just right.'

God was the programmer. The laws of physics and the fundamental constants were the source code.

there are no arbitrary constants ... nature is so constituted that it is possible logically to lay down such strongly determined laws that within these laws only rationally determined constants occur (not constants, therefore, whose numerical value could be changed without destroying the theory).

Humanity, it seemed, was one of the galaxy's constants.

Anyway, she wrote, it's good to learn that over there is not so very unlike over here , and that human intelligence and human stupidity, as well as human nature, the best and worst of it, are the great constants in the changing world.

In fact, if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that produced life like ours are immense.

Elementary considerations led me to the conclusion that a medium, composed of layers of different dielectric constants, must behave as a uniaxial crystal if it is assumed that the layer thicknesses are only a fraction of a wave-length.

But some numbers, called dimensionless numbers, have the same numerical value no matter what units of measurement are chosen. Probably the most famous of these is the "fine-structure constant," .... Physicists love this number not just because it is dimensionless, but also because it is a combination of three fundamental constants of nature.

Physicists love this number not just because it is dimensionless, but also because it is a combination of three fundamental constants of nature. Why do these constants come together to make the particular number 1/137.036 and not some other number?

Since only a narrow range of the allowed values for, say, the fine structure constant will permit observers to exist in the Universe, we must find ourselves in the narrow range of possibilities which permit them, no matter how improbable they are. We must ask for the conditional probability of observing constants to take particular ranges, given that other features of the Universe, like its age, satisfy necessary conditions for life.

We have never explained the numerical value of any of the constants of Nature.

The more simultaneous variations of other constants one includes in these considerations, the more restrictive is the region where life, as we know it, can exist. It is very likely that if variations can be made then they are not all independent. Rather, making a small change in one constant might alter one or more of the others as well. This would tend to make the restrictions on most variations become even more tightly constrained.

the values of the constants of Nature are rather bio-friendly. If they are changed by even a small amount the world becomes lifeless and barren instead of a home for interesting complexity

If the constants of Nature are slowly changing then we could be on a one-way slide to extinction. We have learnt that our existence exploits many peculiar coincidences between the values of different constants of Nature, and that the observed values of the constants fall within some very narrow windows of opportunity for the existence of life.

If constants like G and ? do not vary in time, then the standard history of our Universe has a simple broad-brush appearance. During the first 300,000 years the dominant energy in the Universe is radiation and the temperature is greater than 3000 degrees and too hot for any atoms or molecules to exist. The Universe is a huge soup of electrons, photons of light and nuclei.

All we can assert with confidence is a negative: if the constants of Nature were not within one percent or so of their observed values, then the basic buildong blocks of life would not exist in sufficient profusion in the Universe. Moreover, changes like this would affect the very stability of the elements and prevent the existence of the required elements rather than merely suppress their abundance.

We can easily imagine worlds in which the constants of Nature take on slightly different numerical values where living beings like ourselves would not be possible. Make the fine structure constant bigger and there can be no atoms, make the strength of gravity greater and stars exhaust their fuel very quickly, reduce the strength of nuclear forces and there can be no biochemistry, and so on.