What is constant alpha?

[Schneibster]

Did you really just resort to moving the goal post now?

 

You start by saying X is true.

Then insist X is true because Susskind said it (even called it awkward, not sure for whom)

Then claim it probably loses something in translation

And now it's a metaphor.

 

 

I wonder, then, at what point are we going to consider the remote and terribly implausible possibility that there was an error in the invincible text's content or (no!) in your initial assertion.

 

I think you missed the part where I said it was a metaphor at the very beginning.

 

 

 

A good way (though not mathematically precise) is to think of it as the chance, given everything else is just right, i.e. the angles of the electron and photon are just right, and they'll intersect at a given spacetime location with a known uncertainty, that an electron and a photon will actually interact. If they were little balls they'd interact every time, since they're subatomic quantum particles they only interact 1/137 of the time.

 

But as I say it's a notionally, but not numerically, accurate answer. So don't get too stuck on the analogy.

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/81805-what-is-constant-alpha/?p=792010

 

That is, note please, post number 4 on this thread.

 

And that makes me question your purpose here, which is clearly not to argue about physics.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Schneibster

[mooeypoo]

Look, you're really being wishwashy here.

 

You're giving an example that people (two of them) told you is incorrect. You keep insisting that text with the name "Susskind" on them are completely and utterly undeniably true, and when you encounter several points to the opposite (from more than one person, already) you tend to backtrack and remind people it's not completely true, it's an analogy.

 

So, you're correct in that I represented the order of your backtracking wrong. In between the 'swansont must feel awkward for doubting The Susskind' and 'it must be translation', you admit it may be an analogy. That would've been somewhat acceptable, if only it didn't take away from the discussion at hand, which, as you were told repeatedly (by even more than two people) is not being answered by that post.

 

We can, with relief, move on.

 

Luckily, you're here to validate the purposes of all who discuss the forums. Then again, these big bold red letters and that nice final sentence with the condescending tone at the end must mean I was insta-pwned, and must retreat to a corner, with no purpose at all.

[Schneibster]

Look, I really told the truth here. And you're really being irritating about it.

 

Do you have some physics to talk about?

[ccwebb]

Soooo... alpha is a constant, and like all constants, scientist are always testing that. Always checking to make sure what they know as a constant is just that. Alpha is electromagnetic bond between to particles and the value is a very small percentage?

[Strange]

Soooo... alpha is a constant, and like all constants, scientist are always testing that. Always checking to make sure what they know as a constant is just that.

Yep.

 

 

Alpha is electromagnetic bond between to particles and the value is a very small percentage?

 

I wouldn't say it is the "electromagnetic bond" (that sounds more like electric charge). But it is, among other things, a measure of the degree to which photons interact with electrons.

 

There is a list of the physical meanings here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant#Physical_interpretations