A concrete question equivalent to philosophical musing of why the value of the fine-structure constant alpha is what it is is why the fundamental charge e (charge of an electron or proton) is sqrt(alpha) ≈ 0.08542 ≈ (1/11.706) Planck charge units. Wouldn't it be nice if it were a rational or other "nice" number?
The smallest discrete charges currently known are multiples of e/3 observed in quarks. Will we someday discover fundamental particles with even smaller discrete charges?
No comments :
Post a Comment