58 minutes ago, birdguy said:

I read the link.  I don't much understand it but I read it hoping I would

Now I'm going to ask a simple question and hope there is a rather simple layman's answer to it.

How do you know that?

Noel

It is a bit involved, but if the fine structure constant changes, electromagnetic forces change. Since they keep atoms and molecules together, even a small change could have dramatic consequences.

I do not doubt that, but I think the consequences are exaggerated. Yes, things would be different, but I doubt that such a world would be void of atoms and molecules. They just would have different properties, and probably life forms would be different, too. Just like life forms on a heavier or lighter planet would look different from us.

8 minutes ago, qqwertzde said:

They just would have different properties, and probably life forms would be different, too.

Do you mean a different version of carbon would still have the properties required to create some form of life, or do you mean a different version of another atom would have these properties?

8 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

Do you mean a different version of carbon would still have the properties required to create some form of life, or do you mean a different version of another atom would have these properties?

Well, we are just speculating. Maybe Carbon wouldn't be suitable in that universe, but Nitrogen would. We'll never know, since we don't have that universe to play with. The question of whether alpha=1/137 is necessary for life isn't a scientific question, since we cannot perform repeatable experiments to test alternatives. That doesn't make it an uninteresting question 🙂

 

19 hours ago, qqwertzde said:

Well, we are just speculating. Maybe Carbon wouldn't be suitable in that universe, but Nitrogen would. We'll never know, since we don't have that universe to play with. The question of whether alpha=1/137 is necessary for life isn't a scientific question, since we cannot perform repeatable experiments to test alternatives. That doesn't make it an uninteresting question 🙂

 

But if Alpha was even a little higher, it seems atoms would not form at all.

And if it was even a little lower, Stars would apparently tend to burn out so fast that there would be little time/chance for life to even evolve....

 

Edited October 3, 20223 yr by HiFlyer

15 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

But if Alpha was even a little higher, it seems atoms would not form at all. Which would seem to put the kibosh on life.

The PBS video says that, if alpha is zero, atoms wouldn't form. Also, if alpha was 4% different, carbon and, therefore, life as we know it would not exist. I could not understand if it was 4% higher or lower or both.

If the elements have different properties from the present ones, there may still be an element, other than carbon, which can form all the complex molecules required for some form of life.

Edited October 3, 20223 yr by dmwalker

2 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

If the elements have different properties from the present ones, there may still be an element, other than carbon, which can form all the complex molecules required for some form of life.

Not if with a lower Alpha helium simply wouldn't fuse at all (no stars) or the stars would burn out too quickly due to too much fusion.

1 minute ago, HiFlyer said:

Not if with a lower Alpha helium simply wouldn't fuse at all (no stars) or the stars would burn out too quickly due to too much fusion.

I suppose there could be a small range of values of alpha which could still allow stars to form.

8 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

I suppose there could be a small range of values of alpha which could still allow stars to form.

I guess the point is that the wriggle room is so fantastically small that our universe just randomly hitting the correct number seems incredibly sus' (as my niece would say) and will remain sus' until we figure out what its trying to tell us.

EDIT And there's also the oddity that it didn't just go ahead and drop all the way to zero, which would seem the natural thing for it to do?

Edited October 3, 20223 yr by HiFlyer

17 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I guess the point is that the wriggle room is so fantastically small that our universe just randomly hitting the correct number seems incredibly sus' (as my niece would say) and will remain sus' until we figure out what its trying to tell us.

Since the value of alpha was close to 1 right after the Big Bang and then dropped to the present value, one question might be was it really random or, somehow, predetermined. Were the values of all of the constants in the equation changing or just some of them?

Edited October 3, 20223 yr by dmwalker

10 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

was it really random or, somehow, predetermined.

And then the question becomes predetermined by what? 

Like I said, its fun for the imagination that we don't have all the answers (and that so many of the answers we think we have will eventually turn out to be BS)

30 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I guess the point is that the wriggle room is so fantastically small that our universe just randomly hitting the correct number seems incredibly sus'

So, the answer to my original question of how much difference it would make if it was exactly 1/137 instead of 1/137.035999... is maybe a significant difference or maybe not. I just prefer my constants to be whole numbers so I don't have to memorise a whole bunch more numbers after the decimal point.

9 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

(and that so many of the answers we think we have will eventually turn out to be BS)

We used to think, but now we know.  And today's 'now we know' will become tomorrow's 'we used to think'.

Noel

5 hours ago, dmwalker said:

The PBS video says that, if alpha is zero, atoms wouldn't form. Also, if alpha was 4% different, carbon and, therefore, life as we know it would not exist. I could not understand if it was 4% higher or lower or both.

If the elements have different properties from the present ones, there may still be an element, other than carbon, which can form all the complex molecules required for some form of life.

A value of zero would mean there is no electromagnetic force. Yes, I agree, that would be a totally different world. A small change of the value of alpha could certainly have consequences. Yes, Carbon might not be possible, but then Nitrogen might take over. It would be a different world, but I would expect that it would work along broadly similar lines. 

By the way, from a physicists point of view, a value of zero for anything is just as far off as a value of infinity. That may be surprising, but it basically is a matter of perspective (technically: Fourier transformation): To resolve something that has a size S with radiation, the wavelength of that radiation cannot be larger than S. Since the energy of radiation is given by E=k/S (with k some constant), smaller S means larger E. Resolving something of size zero requires infinite energy. That is the reason why high energy physics exists, they need humongous accelerators to reduce the resolution S of their detectors.