{"id":179195,"date":"2023-12-26T15:24:18","date_gmt":"2023-12-26T21:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/unlocking-the-mystery-of-137-why-this-number-is-so-important"},"modified":"2023-12-26T15:24:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T21:24:18","slug":"unlocking-the-mystery-of-137-why-this-number-is-so-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/unlocking-the-mystery-of-137-why-this-number-is-so-important","title":{"rendered":"Unlocking The Mystery Of 137: Why This Number Is So Important"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TOkd3vJh0fM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A s the mathematician De La Soul famously stated, three is the magic number. But if physicist Richard Feynman is to be believed, that figure is off by a factor of about 400. For Feynman, you see, the \u201cmagic number\u201d is around 1\/137 \u2013 specifically, it\u2019s 1\/137.03599913.<\/p>\n<p>Physicists know it as \u03b1, or the fine structure constant. \u201cIt has been a mystery ever since it was discovered,\u201d Feynman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/quotes\/1016482-there-is-a-most-profound-and-beautiful-question-associated-with\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"> wrote<\/a> in his 1985 book <em> QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter<\/em>. \u201cAll good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s both incredibly mysterious and unbelievably important: a seemingly random, dimensionless number, which nevertheless holds the secret to life itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A s the mathematician De La Soul famously stated, three is the magic number. But if physicist Richard Feynman is to be believed, that figure is off by a factor of about 400. For Feynman, you see, the \u201cmagic number\u201d is around 1\/137 \u2013 specifically, it\u2019s 1\/137.03599913. Physicists know it as \u03b1, or the fine [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}