Colloquia

The MPQ Colloquium is held on Tuesdays at 2:30 pm.
The MCQST Colloquium takes place on Tuesdays at 2:00 pm.

The talks will take place in Herbert Walther Lecture Hall. Details on how to participate online are distributed via the mailing lists [wiss-mpq] and [Mpq-colloquium-stream]. To receive this information, please register using the link on the right sidebar.

Scientific organization of the talks: Dr. Stephan Dürr and Prof. Thomas Udem

THE DARK ALPHA α STORY (Charles Kirkham Rhodes)

15:00
Date: Sep 15, 2026
Time: 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Prof. Charles Kirkham Rhodes
THIRD MILLENNIUM PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE INSTITUTE, CHICAGO, IL
Location: Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Hans-Kopferman-Straße 1, 85748 Garching
Room: Herbert Walther Lecture Hall
Host: MPQ

In his book, “QED: THE STRANGE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER”, Richard P. Feynman described the Fine Structure Constant ALPHA α, introduced initially by Arnold Sommerfeld in 1916 through the analysis of relativistic corrections to the Bohr atom, as “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics; a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man”. [more]