This so-called fascination and search for meaning or reason behind constants reminds of the anthropic principle [0], which basically goes like this: "things are the way they are because we wouldn't be here to observe them otherwise".
The last part of the article, however, is still quite intriguing. Nobody would expect any of the 3 components of alpha to change, unless somehow the measurements can be affected by the medium (as the speed of light depends on that).
(I could be wrong about this, I haven't thought about it in great detail)
I think invoking the Anthropic principle only makes sense if we can demonstrate that there are a number of other "places" with varying "conditions". For such a selection bias to occur there needs to be a population to actually select from. For example, the Anthropic principle makes sense regarding the composition of the earth because we know that there are a large number of planets with a distribution of orbits and masses around a distribution of stars. Of course we will be on a planet that supports life as we know it.
To invoke the anthropic principle regarding a constant would imply — to me, at least — that there would need to be a number of universes with different constants. Or different regions of this universe where the constant would vary.
If there truly is only a single universe, and the constant is not changing in time or space, then it would seem we did actually just happen to get lucky.
Edit: of course, at this point we can't say definitely either way about our universe. We don't know if ours is one among many, or if its the solitary universe in existence. We also, clearly, have uncertainty about how constant this constant actually is.
Another alternative was proposed by Hawking & Hertog (Phys Rev D, 2006, see below): walk the present values surface back to a superposition of possible universes and study the mechanisms that generate probabilities near one. That then is their way of asking about the degree of fine-tuning, with the anthropic principle being recasta as a constraint on the set of possible consistent histories.
H&H spend a lot of time comparing themselves to the approach of selecting an initial values surface in the early universe and marching it forward; they more or less do the same but flip the direction of the arrow of time and arrive at a superposed state. Re-flipping the arrow of time leads to relic fields like the CMB carrying evidence for the superposition.
Essentially this is just taking time-reversibility of local microscopic physics seriously (great), and absorbing the difference in degrees of freedom in macroscopic physics into a superposition (uh, ok). The problem of setting up a values surface remains pretty much the same. "Fine tuning" is just a way of saying that the system is sensitive to the values it evolves from (or to).
I'm not really convinced that that a present-day spacelike hypersurface is easier to write down than an early-time initial values surface.
I don't see why there needs to be other universes that actually exist in order for the anthropic principle to apply. It seems to make perfect sense to apply it to a set of conceivable universes, even if such universes don't actually exist and even if it's not physically possible for them to exist.
I think this entire discussion is sensitive to exactly what one means by "The Anthropic Principle". If one's definition of the Anthropic Principle in this context simply means that an observed universe will be consistent with a universe that can be observed, then I find it to be trivially true and applicable to a single universe scenario.
I subscribe to a definition of the anthropic principle that invokes selection bias as its core mechanism. I think that, in order to have a selection bias, one needs to actually be selecting from a population. Hence my assertion that you need a multi-verse (with different constants in each universe) or a constant that is variable in space or time [2].
The difference, to me, is this:
If you are selecting from a population the Anthropic Principle can actually help explain why a value is what it is. Under our understanding of planetary bodies, we often invoke the Anthropic Principle to explain why the earth falls in the habitable-zone. Earth falls in the habitable-zone because — we think — life is most likely to arise on a planet in that zone.
However, if you are not selecting from a population, I don't find that the Anthropic Principle explains why a value is what it is. In the scenario where there is only a single value, I think the Anthropic Principle simply demonstrates that that particular value must support life.
Put another way, if all planets we observed were the exact same distance from their star as Earth [1], then we couldn't use the Anthropic Principle to explain why Earth is that particular distance from the sun. We would have to find other astronomical reasons to explain why planets form at that specific distance from a star. In this single-distance scenario the only thing the Anthropic Principle actually does for us is confirm that such a distance supports life.
[1] Well, not distance per se, but placed such that they received the same amount of stellar energy in their orbits.
[2] This final sentence of the introduction of the Anthropic Principle also makes some reference to this saying: "Most often such arguments draw upon some notion of the multiverse for there to be a statistical population of universes to select from and from which selection bias (our observance of only this universe, compatible with life) could occur."
> If one's definition of the Anthropic Principle in this context simply means that an observed universe will be consistent with a universe that can be observed, then I find it to be trivially true and applicable to a single universe scenario.
It is "trivially" true in a sense. It's a tautology. But it's still useful for thinking about things. I think it applies just as well to a single universe or a multiverse, because even with a single universe you can at least hypothesize about other ways the single universe could behave.
> However, if you are not selecting from a population, I don't find that the Anthropic Principle explains why a value is what it is. In the scenario where there is only a single value, I think the Anthropic Principle simply demonstrates that that particular value must support life.
It might not answer the extremely broad and ill-defined question "why" to your satisfaction, but I find it fairly satisfying. If things were another way, then I wouldn't be observing the universe because I wouldn't exist. So it's not strange that the universe is this way, given that I exist.
The goal is to explain "why is the number this value and not some other value". Unless the number actually takes on multiple values, the anthropic principle has no explanatory power.
If there is only one value, the universe can't "plan" or "choose" a value that is conducive to life, and so pointing to its suitability for life is a teleological argument-- it explains a cause (the value of the constant) in terms of its effect (the eventual existence of life). That's backwards and circular-- causes come before effects.
Think of it in terms of Bayes theorem. The probability of observing a constant that doesn't support life is 0, since we wouldn't exist. So the probability of observing constants that just happen to support life is 1, and so it shouldn't be surprising at all. If it wasn't that way, we just wouldn't exist to ask the question.
I think the point is that there's no question of causality between values of constants and the existence of life, just conditionality, which is what Bayes knows how to talk about.
That is, the anthropic principle doesn't try to "explain" why a constant takes a value. It just notes that the conditional property of us observing that value (given that we exist) is 1, regardless of what the unconditional property might be (or even whether it's variable to begin with).
If something is truly a universal constant, then it's part of the definition of what it is to be the universe. That we can imagine the constant being different is really just an artifact of the imperfect symbolic language we've developed to describe the universe.
Edit: It's hard to come up with a good analogy because obviously I don't have that "perfect" language at my disposal. But for example, a triangle fundamentally has 3 angles. We can imagine polygons with more angles, but it doesn't make sense to imagine a triangle with any other number of angles. If "the whole universe" were synonymous with "triangle", the notion of "universe with 4 angles" would be absurd. The ideal description would not even allow for that possibility.
Yes, if we were able to consistently measure different values of α over space and/or time it would be significant and help to strengthen the anthropic principle as it could be applied here.
There are a couple challenges to these measurements, though. Sean Carrol presents a theoretical challenge in his blog post "The Fine Structure Constant is Probably Constant"[1]. Chad Orzel has a more observational critique of the results in "Why I’m Skeptical About the Changing Fine-Structure Constant" [2].
To be fair, these critiques are from 2010 and Webb, et al. has published several papers since these critiques were made. I haven't seen updated debate or discussion over Webb, et al's findings. Still, I would think we have some potential evidence that the constant may vary, but I don't think this evidence is near conclusive yet.
The component constants of α = e^2/4πεħc have dimensions, so depend on what units you use to measure them in. Their combination comprising the electromagnetic fine structure constant is, however, dimensionless, and is satisfactorily explained.
The Anthropic Principle is usually invoked to explain why two very large dimensionless numbers, i.e. the inverse gravitational "fine structure constant" (which is assumed to be constant), and the age of the universe measured in atomic units (which increases with time), are both very close to 10^40. It is suggested that, for intelligent life to evolve and measure them, the two numbers must be roughly equal, and other dimensionless numbers, such as the electromagnetic fine structure constant, must similarly have values within a narrow range. And this in turn has led some people to believe it's the deliberate action of a creator, or that there are numerous other universes whose constants have different values, and almost all are devoid of life.
However, if we apply this Anthropic Principle to planetary orbits, we could conclude that planetary orbits are roughly circular because, if they were (for example) very long rectangles (or some other random shape), we wouldn't be around to observe their shape.
Of course, no one believes that. It is accepted that Celestial Mechanics, based on Newton's Law of Gravity, (which can be derived from the more accurate General Theory of Relativity), adequately explains why planetary orbits are roughly circular.
An alternative explanation is that we simply haven't worked out all the physical laws. For example, the force of gravity could become weaker as the universe gets older or less dense (or, expressed in different units, gravity remains constant but elementary particles get lighter). Dirac, and later a few others including myself, modified Einstein's equations in an attempt to explain this coincidence.
You are probably right, that it means nothing. And I am happy people think this because nothing is meaningless. I believe there is no grand secret to this number or of life.
In other words, things are the way they are because we wouldn't be able to fall in love, dance to the music and enjoy life, if things were otherwise.
Thinking too much about why, distracts from the now. Mystery is what makes life worth living. And hiding ourselves from our self is what makes discovery possible.
If reality is a computer simulation, then proving that is a bit redundant in my opinion.
However, I think it can be proven but once it is, what will there be to know?
> However, I think it can be proven but once it is, what will there be to know?
If reality is a computer simulation I can think of a multitude of other questions about reality:
- Can we communicate "outside" of the simulation?
- Is the simulation a product of intelligence that is intentionally running the simulation? Or is it a mere by-product of a higher-order universe?
- By studying the simulation in great enough detail, is there anything we can learn about the "outside" universe?
- Is the "outside" simulation a turing machine? Can it compute a higher class of computational problems?
- Are the simulations infinite? Is the "outside" also a simulation? Is it simulations all the way down — or all the way up? Is there a "real" reality?
- If its simulations all the way down, how did the first simulation get started?
- If there is a "real" reality we get to start all of science over at square one studying this new reality.
This is a rough initial list, but I'm sure there's an endless number of questions to be asked and answered about reality even if we prove its a simulation.
I'm not really sure how you come to the conclusion that others misinterpreted your comment or missed the point. There are no other replies!
I may well have missed the point, though if I have done so because you purposely wrote obtusely then I have no real interest in attempting to decode your writing. I wish you luck in your ventures, and hope someone with more time and ability than I discovers your writings and sends you the e-mail you desire.
You've got the right intuition here. The unitless part is key for several reasons. It means that the number itself is meaningful. In your example, the ratio of 1.7 long/wide would be the same no matter what units used to make the measurement. (Obviously, the units DO have to actually cancel cm/inches doesn't work). The number for the speed of light (299 792 458 m/s) is a defined property, so that number doesn't mean anything deeply. However, 1/137... itself is directly meaningful. This is why people who work in fundamental constant research use dimensionless ratios.
Now for a piece that's more interesting. The fine-structure constant (alpha) is the coupling constant that sets the strength of electromagnetism. This means that its value is the thing that matters in the equation: e^2/\hbar c. Each of the other values is a derived quantity. Further, to speak a bit loosely, only changes in alpha matter -- in the sense that if the speed of light (c) changes, but the other constants (e and \hbar) change in a way that keeps alpha the same, then you wouldn't be able to tell with an experiment that anything has changed.
Contrast this situation w/ a change in alpha -- a table-top experiment would be able to detect the change (given that it's large enough, and we have methods of measuring changes on year-time scales that are a few parts in ~10^-18 (Rosenband, 2008)), as it would mean that physics has changed in a fundamental way.
Uh, pardon the stupid question, but isn't it safer to consider the fine structure constant to be the IR fixed point of \alpha (i.e. \alpha(\mu = m_e)^-1 = 137...)?
\alpha(\mu = M_Z) is about 128. But m_0(photon), h, and e are the same at both energy scales (we can determine the numerical values experimentally). To the best of our ability to measure, none of them (including, if we ignore the main posting, \alpha_em) varies anywhere in a background fixed by the isometry group of SR (where we find c as the sole free parameter, corresponding to the speed of a particle where m_0(particle) = 0).
So I'm having trouble understanding your assertion that "Alpha is the fundamental physical constant: c, e and \hbar are the derived quantities" (in your other comment, but also reflected in your second paragraph above).
I think we both totally agree that varying \alpha_em at different points in space or time leads to a mess.
Let's say the width of your desk is denoted by "w". The length is then 1.7w. The aspect ratio is dimensionless because it is = 1.7w/1w. w/w = dimensionless. But you still used a unit, w, to make the measurement in the first place.
He could have measured the angle of the desk's diagonal makes with the longer side, that would give him tan(w/l), no inches or centimetres required.
You do need radians, but that's not a unit in the same way a 'meter' is, you don't need any kind of reference to know how much, say, 1 pi radians is. For most intents and purposes angles are unitless.
That is inescapable for any quantity whatsoever that we extract from nature. In dimensionless quantities, the units just canceled out. Amperes divided by amperes, or whatever.
See root comment. I do not have to specify the units that I used when I quote the aspect ratio, or the method that I used.
If you measure something which has units using different units, then you get a different answer. If you measure something which doesn't, like aspect ratio, then you don't.
I think a lot of the confusion in this discussion is coming from the specific example. The fine structure constant, an aspect ratio, or something like Reynold's number for quantifying fluid flow turbulence -- these are all dimensionless numbers that scientists use, sure and there's probably nothing special about them.
I think the confusion is in actually measuring these things. Scientists use dimensionless numbers all the time, but you have to directly measure quantities with units to indirectly get the dimensionless quantity.
1. Standardised.
2. Defined by a numerical relationship to observable physical constants, like c, by definition.
Desk widths aren't a scientific unit. You can only measure the ratio of width to height by reference to a standard unit like the metre, which in turn is based on a constant observable quantity - the distance travelled by light in one second.
You can pick your derived units using any relationship to c - like the distance travelled in 3.2 seconds. But that's still a derived unit, not a fundamental observable unit.
And ratios are dimensionless because they stay the same whatever derived unit system you choose, as long as it's consistent.
To make things more complicated: the size of your desk isn't fixed because the universe is expanding. So the units you are using are just a convention to relate the size of an object to the size of other objects.
So long as the fine structure constant remains the same, your desk (and ruler) won't change size. Rather they will heat slightly as the expanding universe stretches the chemical bonds and those same bonds spring back to average rest length.
Expressing the size of the desk in a coordinate system specifically chosen such that the size doesn't change is much more than a convention. Conventions are arbitrary, like whether to drive on the left or right side of a two-way road.
The effects of air eroding the desk are much more significant than the expansion of the universe. And both are dwarfed by the fact that the texture of the surface keeps the exact length and width from being well-defined.
Indeed, the author conveys the wrong message when implying that only pure numbers have no units. Measurable quantities, as you point out, can also have no units.
Another point that throws me off is the Vulcan scientist part. They would need to be using the same numerical base in order to get that number. There might be some base-less representations of numbers, but they are usually restricted to representing integer numbers. The constant could still be represented by a fraction, but there would be no math-neutral way of saying "hey, this here is a fraction/division".
Not according to any set of definitions that I have ever heard of. Can you provide an explanation of the difference as you understand it?
To give one example, my piece of US Letter paper is 93.5 in^2 in area. One side is 8.5 in long. If I divide these, I find that 93.5 in^2 / 8.5 in = 11 in. Is that eleven inches a ratio or a quantity?
It's a quantity. However, the aspect ratio of US Letter paper, 8.5/11 is a ratio. If you used a copier to reduce a US Letter page by 50%, it would still have the same aspect ratio.
I'm likewise not convinced that the fine structure constant and other constants of its ilk were obtained without taking measurements.
The units involved in the aspect ratio disappear because they are divided out. After that, we don't have to (in fact, must not) cite any units when giving the aspect ratio.
A measurement doesn't have to be direct to be a measurement. In other words, the aspect ratio of a desk is still obtained by measurement and thus is a measured quantity, subject to error and so on.
Of course, both the quantity and the associated error come from previous measurements.
Imagine a balance with an arm that can be somehow folded in half again and again (think a snap bracelet. Those are rigid in one direction and stiff bent in the other). Fold the beam in half and mark the center. Use this point as the fulcrum to balance two objects. Pick the side that comes up. Divide this side in half and use this new half way point as the new fulcrum. starting with 0. if the beam reads on the heavy side, write down a 1. If reads on the light side, write a 0. Eventually you'll have 0.101000101110101 or some such. This is the ratio of the weights of the two objects in base 2. You can binary search the ratio of the weights.
Resistance should be easy as well. I think the wikipedia page for a Wheatstone bridge explains this best.
If this sort of thing interests you, I'd encourage you to look at the quantum metrology triangle. Frequency, resistance, and current are all currently related to a josephson voltage standard, the quantum hall resistance, and the current generated by a single electron transistor. This allows us to standardize all these back to a frequency. Length can be related to frequency by wavelength of light. Everything has been related back to frequency. Basically the only thing not referred back to something absolute is mass, which I think is still referred back to a mass standard, which is a physical thing stored in a vault.
Okay we have mass and time nailed down. I think the subdivision method should work for length as well. Let's try voltage.
Consider two voltage sources that you want to measure the ratio of. Place one source on one arm of a resistor, and the other through a pulse width modulator, (ideal) low pass filter with a cutoff frequency much lower than the pulse width modulator frequency, and then attach this to the other lead of the resistor. Turn on the voltage sources and adjust the pulse width modulator until the resistor doesn't heat up. You could place it in a cup of water and monitor the temperature. Remember we're free to push up the current in this thought experiment
Here's another. Imagine you want the ratio of two clock sources. Put them both through frequency dividers, with one divider output put through a phase shifter. compare the resultant divided frequencies by xoring the signals together. The ratio of the frequencies is given by the ratio of the dividers when you can find a phase shift such that the xor output doesn't change. The time you wait to see if the xor output doesn't change represents the certainty you have in your ratio. This is called the time frequency uncertainty relation, also known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Well, you've got to measure some quantity. How about an angle? Measure any angle in a right triangle and you know something about the ratio of the sides.
At first i thought "aha! yes, how obvious.", but then i thought about how one might measure an angle. i would use a protractor. but how is a protractor calibrated? surely the angles determine a relationship between commensurable quantities, and a protractor is calibrated by performing measurements on lengths held at angles and measuring the observed relationship. can one measure an angle directly without performing an experiment on commensurate lengths? a protractor only works because a measurement of an angle can be transported and remain the same (to an approximation). that's a nontrivial fact that i took for granted, but that's really what a protractor does: it is the stored result of a bunch of experiments to determine angles. those experiments must have been done using observations of dimensional quantities.
i would like an example of an experiment that directly measures a dimensionless quantity without inferring it from direct measurements of dimensional quantities. it's just a curiosity.
However, we can use angles in such a way that we never have any estimate that correlates with the size of the rectangle whose aspect ratio we are measuring.
Suppose some rectangle is visible at a distance. We can use parallax angles from our vantage point to estimate its aspect ratio.
We have no idea how long or wide that rectangle is because we don't know how far away it is.
(Indeed, we don't even know whether it is a rectangle, or whether it is some quadrilateral that appears as a rectangle under perspective.)
I think you're saying something a little too strong. I think such a measurement does provide some information about the dimensions of the quadrilateral being measured. I think it would be possible with a bounded number of observations to measure the lengths purely by measuring the angles. You would have to shift your perspective each time, but it shouldn't take too many. So, each such measurement must contribute a non-zero amount of information about the dimensions.
Either that, or i'm misinterpreting your first sentence.
The most fascinating part about alpha to me is the implication that it isn't actually constant, and varies over time and/or distance. I once read a suggestion that perhaps the observed universe is simply the portion of the greater universe where alpha has a value that lets things like stars, planets, and life exist.
Being actually a derived quantity, alpha's non-constancy actually implies that one or more of the underlying ‘constants’ vary non-homogeneously — which is what you said, but slightly different in import... observing alpha is actually just a convenient way of observing the others indexed together.
You've got this backward. Alpha is the fundamental physical constant: c, e and \hbar are the derived quantities. I'll quote part of another comment that I left on this thread:
> Now for a piece that's more interesting. The fine-structure constant (alpha) is the coupling constant that sets the strength of electromagnetism. This means that its value is the thing that matters in the equation: e^2/\hbar c. Each of the other values is a derived quantity. Further, to speak a bit loosely, only changes in alpha matter -- in the sense that if the speed of light (c) changes, but the other constants (e and \hbar) change in a way that keeps alpha the same, then you wouldn't be able to tell with an experiment that anything has changed.
> Contrast this situation w/ a change in alpha -- a table-top experiment would be able to detect the change (given that it's large enough, and we have methods of measuring changes on year-time scales that are a few parts in ~10^-18 (Rosenband, 2008)), as it would mean that physics has changed in a fundamental way.
Alpha could be different in different galaxies. It will not vary in a galaxy but maybe vary between galaxies. This is not clear, most likely not. It has much to do with the early stages of galaxy crystallization which could be the same for all galaxies.
It has a geometrical underlying principle in BSM-SG. c is also derived, e more or less, not so sure with h, guess you could.
Most of the 'constants' from the standard model are derived in BSM-SG, there are only very few underlying constants.
Physics experiments have ruled theories like this out. They can put a very very small upper bound on how much the constants can change over a volume the size of the universe, and over the lifetime of the universe.
-1/12 is the result of applying zeta function regularization or Ramanujan summation to the sum of the positive integers. It's arguably interesting, but hardly amazing to the vast majority of people who have never heard of those techniques. But the thing that really annoys me is all the people presenting it as the finite limit of a divergent series (this is the default meaning of "=" after an infinite series, if you're using a non-standard meaning you have to specify that!). The first of those videos does this! It's nonsense, and this kind of sloppy approach only encourages contempt for mathematics.
Pi is not a fundamental physical constant and has myriad uses. α is only special when observing that it is a physical constant; you need to observe the physical universe to arrive at the conclusion that it's a meaningful number.
> This surprises me. I would have thought pi, the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter, is a much better known example of a pure number.
Everyone is so fancy. One, two, three, and even zero are pretty well known, even outside physics.
On non-internet[0] connected computers in my old uni's physics lab, the passwords were often some combination of the phrase "physics" and repetitions of the number "137". Quite the fascination.
[0] why I don't feel uncomfortable disclosing this here
The article is so-so. But the physics here is really cool. Essentially, there's growing evidence that the fundamental constants may not be perfectly constant. See http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.02536 for the gory details.
Would you really characterize this Wilczynska, Webb, King et al. paper as an argument that there is "growing evidence", rather than (say) that it's a number-crunching argument that the small amount of observations that suggested a dipole variation to Webb et al. (and King et al.) show a \Delta\alpha / \alpha that's close enough to unity that one can cherry pick and say "oh yes, there's a (small) dipole variation" or "oh no, the data is consistent with no variation" ?
I prefer their earlier slide deck for gory details (it's mostly based on King et al 2012).
(The previous "What if it's correct?" slide undersells the impact to the standard cosmology of a violation of isotropy and the consequent erosion of the "must be homogenous at scales > 250 Mly" part of the cosmological principle. Also, "what if atomic physics is really obviously different only very slightly outside the horizon?" feels like a declaration of war against the Copernican principle with precious little evidence, and against pretty good theory that has other lines of evidence backing it (cf. Carroll @ http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/10/18/the-fine... who points to Banks, Dine & Douglas @ http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0112059 who in turn point to other work that shows that you probably can't vary \alpha without varying other constants like the m_e and QCD coupling).
The article fails to explain where the 2*pi comes from, and why 1/alpha is more natural. Does this quantity arise in some context other than unit-analysis speculation?
The 2pi comes from the usual method of using hbar, instead of h. Where hbar = h/2pi, and is the Planck constant adjusted to use radians instead of cycles.
This is much more natural when working with frequencies instead of using cycles.
Yes, this constant arises prolifically when looking at the atomic "fine structure", which modifies the usual hydrogen energies to includes interactions between an electron's spin and its orbit (the un-modified ones only include the kinetic energy of the reduced electron-proton and the electric potential energy). There are further interactions that can be added, eg the hyperfine interaction which includes the spin-spin interaction between the proton in the nucleus and the orbiting electron.
And if you use Planck units where hbar=c=G=1, you can do many things easily, for example denote the potential of an electron at distance r as just alpha/r (without all those other pesky constants embedded in Gauss's law).
jeffwas has explained the factor of 2pi. It's just the 2pi radians in a circle to convert from angular frequencies to regular frequencies.
I don't know the detailed history, but in practice the fact that it's an inverse is essentially because it's most important role is as part of an expansion like a Taylor series. The standard method for calculating lots of observable effects gives an answer with the form
2.9.6.B Fine structure constant as embedded feature of the twisted prisms
12.A.5.3. Hypothesis of embedded fine structure constant in the lower level structures of matter organization
It gets derived later to:
α_c = 2 ⁄ [ ( n^2 + 2/2 )^1⁄2 + n ] = 7.29735194 × 10–3
where n =137 results in a very accurate value of α.
It is important to understand that the fine matter constant has it's origin in a geometrical organization of the prisms. A very low level building block of matter in the BSM-SG model.
It is 1/6th the size of a neutrino (neutral or positive flavor) - those 2 neutrinos are composed of 6 prisms of either large or small prisms an rectangular geometry j but the prisms is itself a very large structure compared with the ultimate building blocks, the fundamental particles.
The prism itself is quite complex in it's internal structure but there is a very logical explanation for its existence. On the first level of organization or you could see it as the first crystallized structure is the Primary Tetrahedron. You basically take a bunch of Fundamental Particles - just very, very small balls, and create a tetrahedron with same length sides out of it.
Very simplified explanation:
This tetrahedron has a very complex vibrational mode - like every layer of our physical world. You end up basically with 2 overlaying vibrational modes, where you need n cycles of the small cycle to result in one cycle of the larger one. Alpha is the Energy relation of those cycles. Through alpha, you end up with 2 Energies in the prims, CP and TP.
Alpha is very fascinating feature as it is basically the driving force of most of the complex behavior of nature, it is everywhere in the BSM-SG model.
Funny side-node: In the BSM model, the cosmological redshift is not of Doppler kind (also no space expansion) and you can find the fine matter constant in the periodicity of the red-shift.
Please note, that you have to do a proper Doppler correction in the BSM model if you measure galaxies. It also explains the Lyman-Alpha-Forest phenomena very well.
From the standard model perspective: I have no clue what it could be, like most constants.
I really, REALLY hate this new trend of having websites swipe left and right for different articles. Argh!
I highlight text on the internet as I read it, but this page moves all over the place when I do! And on NYT it jumps around to different articles as I'm reading. Makes it impossible for me to consume the text on these pages.
The last part of the article, however, is still quite intriguing. Nobody would expect any of the 3 components of alpha to change, unless somehow the measurements can be affected by the medium (as the speed of light depends on that).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle