The fine structure constant is one of the most important natural constants of all. At TU Wien, a remarkable way of measuring it has been found—it shows up as a rotation angle. One over 137: This is ...

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, ...

Researchers at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory in Paris have made the most precise measurement of one of the fundamental constants, called the fine-structure constant, providing physicists with a vital ...

Why is our Universe the way it is, and not some other way? There are only three things that make it so: the laws of nature themselves, the fundamental constants governing reality, and the initial ...

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, ...

In 2024, TU Wien presented the world's first nuclear clock. Now it has been demonstrated that the technology can also be used to investigate unresolved questions in fundamental physics. Subscribe to ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

What is the meaning of life? Even the best of us couldn't hope to answer that question in a Universe Today article. But there are those who would try to "constrain" it, at least in terms of physics. A ...