Even on a black hole’s turf, an essential constant of nature holds steady. According to standard physics, the fine-structure constant, which governs interactions of electrically charged particles, is ...

A crucial number that rules the universe goes big in a strange quantum material. The fine-structure constant is about 10 times its normal value in a type of material called quantum spin ice, ...

Thorium atomic nuclei can be used for very specific precision measurements. This had been suspected for decades, and the search for suitable atomic nucleus states had been ongoing worldwide. In 2024, ...

In sports and in cosmology, the rules of the game aren't supposed to change as you go along. Athletes call this playing fair. Cosmologists call it the cosmological principle, and it means that the ...

One of the most exciting prospects in physics has been discovering that fundamental constants are not actually constant at all. When I first started writing, physicists and astronomers were just ...

In physics, the Fine Structure Constant is one the strangest numbers. The Fine Structure Constant is one the strangest numbers in all of physics. It’s the job of physicists to worry about numbers, but ...

A new measurement of the fine-structure constant is three times more accurate than before. The constant helps glue together "coarse" and "fine" measurement of particles. The new measurement bests a ...

Cosmologists in the US have proposed a new way to measure the fine-structure constant as it was some 13 billion years ago -- and see if its value differed from that measured today. The method, which ...

Electronics is really an applied branch of physics, so it isn’t surprising that if you are serious about your electronics, you probably know a little physics, too. If you’ve ever heard the term “fine ...

Electronics is really an applied branch of physics, so it isn’t surprising that if you are serious about your electronics, you probably know a little physics, too. If you’ve ever heard the term “fine ...

Physicists have made the most accurate measurement to date of the fine-structure constant, alpha -- the dimensionless number that is a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force. The new ...