1/137

I haven't poasted on the Fine Structure Constant, which approximates 1/137. So, let's.

It's a ratio; no units are here. By convention we denote 1/137 by "α", confusingly since we also use that miniscule hellenism for other ratios like thrust/weight, but this one may deserve that pride-of-place. DEEP2 was observing it back in time (meaning: space) and in 2005 revealed that it hadn't changed in seven billion years. To put another way, the laws of physics had not changed in the whole saga of the formation of our solar system, probably from some nebula expelled by supernovae of stars preceding it by maybe millions of years. Inasmuch as creationists had put into question the antiquity of physical laws, this was one of several findings which let the air out of the movement in Dover that year.

This blog is a post 2019 project so hasn't cared to revisit DEEP2. Two decades later, we should consider other findings to suss out the validity of modern physics before all that.

Google AI points to quasar absorption-lines and (naturally) the Cosmic Microwave Background. This has a recent validation here, within 1%; the observable physical laws constrain what scalar dark matter can be, in terms of mass. Like neutrinos have mass but we can measure only the upper bound per particle.

We - not I - should use this paper in discussions with the Catholics of July 2023. Dr Rudolf Hilfer notes Pius XII positing the universe at five billion years ago, holding that to ridicule, which is a mite unfair to that late-1940s bishop, inasmuch as he (prophetically?) marked a time before what we know of our formation, if not DEEP2-before. Hilfer in fact cedes past even DEEP2, to the Cosmic Microwave Background. He (implicitly) allows that the laws of physics apply throughout pretty much everything Milky Way. I counter: before all that, we can at least constrain what went on.

Now, this is not a cosmology blog. Those exist; we can bring Turtle Island and Woit and Triton Station. Which I do against-interest. On one hand I know that Turtle hates me, that Woit counts me as a supporter of a fascist dictator, and that Triton counts me as a racist. On the other hand I know that Dr Hilfer is commanded to love me. And Hilfer can in fact prove that he loves me, by conceding that alternate theories exist against the Λ-CDM consensus. He can even agree that I'm a fascist racist worthy of hate by others, some not even pagans.

Calling Big Bang a "narrative" in the context of terms like "pagan cosmology" implies dishonesty driven by animus. And what do pagans deserve, Herr Doktor...? Let us just say, Hilfer shows his own animus thereby. And if not dishonesty; a certain disingenuosity.