Pure Derivation Of The Exact Fine-structure Constant & As A Ratio Of Two Inexact Metric Constants
Theorists at the Strings Conference in July of 2000 were asked what mysteries remain to be revealed in the 21st century. Participants were invited to help formulate the ten most important unsolved problems in fundamental physics, which were finally selected and ranked by a distinguished panel of David Gross, Edward Witten and Michael Duff. No questions were more worthy than the first two problems respectively posed by Gross and Witten:
#1: Are all the (measurable) dimensionless parameters that characterize the physical universe calculable in principle or are some merely determined by historical or quantum mechanical accident and incalculable?
#2: How can quantum gravity help explain the origin of the universe?
A newspaper article about these millennial mysteries expressed some interesting comments about the #1 question. Perhaps Einstein indeed put it more crisply: Did God have a choice in creating the universe? – which summarizes quandary #2 as well. While certainly the Eternal One may have had a choice in Creation, the following arguments...