THE DARK ALPHA α STORY (Charles Kirkham Rhodes)
- 15:00
- Datum: 15.09.2026
- Uhrzeit: 15:00
- Vortragende(r): Prof. Charles Kirkham Rhodes
- THIRD MILLENNIUM PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE INSTITUTE, CHICAGO, IL
- Ort: Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Hans-Kopferman-Straße 1, 85748 Garching
- Raum: Herbert Walther Lecture Hall
- Gastgeber: 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”.
With this issue that commenced in 1916, and was discussed by Feynman in 1985, we will outline the present solution to this conundrum that has persisted for approximately a century. This presentation will (A) describe the solution to the historical riddle of ALPHA α, (B) present the result of a precise “de novo” computation of its value that falls in full accord with its experimentally observed magnitude, (C) describe the connections of ALPHA to both LUMINOUS MATTER and DARK MATTER neutrinos, (D) outline the extension of the significance of ALPHA in the realm of biology, and (E) state its importance in the framework of an OPTIMIZED COSMOLOGY.