Re: Moral relativism.

I'm not a real doofus, but I play one at a national laboratory. (BAISLEY@fndcd.fnal.gov)
Tue, 19 Aug 1997 15:25:14 -0500

>>If it's all going to be wiped out for a hyperspace bypass, what
>>was the point? BTW, the answer's 137 now.
>
>What is that, inflation? And just over a factor of three?

It's the inverse of the Fine Structure Constant, which gives the strength of
the interaction of charged particles via photon exchange. It interrelates the
speed of light, the relative masses of the electron and the neutron, and
Planck's constant. It has no units. It's very close to 1/137. It's
intimately tied up with the study of the Higgs boson. It's used by physicists,
numerologists and spinning woo-li boogers to prove all sorts of silly things,
decide whether the speed of light is constant, and so on. It's something you
should know about.

Cheers,
Wayne

Don't waste a lot of time on this, but here're a few references:

http://hepwww.ph.qmw.ac.uk/epp/lectures/lecture13/lecture13.html
http://www.ldolphin.org/cdkconseq.html
http://dgleahy.com/dgl/p13.html
http://www.ptb.de/english/infos/publicat/ptb-news/news2611.htm
http://www.hookup.net/~jrlawson/part_4.html