Talk:Physical constant/Archive 3

Cosmological parametres/parameters

Is the inclusion of a section on Cosmological parametres or an explanation of the relationship betweeen Physical constants and Cosmological parametres possible? This mere mortal was searching for a long time for Cosmological parametres before finding this page. SmithBlue 07:54, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Does the Anthropic Section belong in this article?

I don't think the discussion on the Anthropic Principle belongs in this article. My impulse is to remove it, but I'd like someone to explain why it is here first.

Mbset 15:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be moved to Dimensionless physical constant. There is a issue regarding the values of the universal physical constants, as to why they are what they are (to which the AP is one possible answer to that question), and also about which physical constants are really the important ones and which ones are either derived from others and/or are really just an expression of the unit system we use to measure them. I would be in favor of deleting it here and putting it (or something like it) in the Dimensionless physical constant article. 207.190.198.130 20:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

How about removing the Anthropic section and putting a note in the "see also" section. 22:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure that the Anthropic principle is notable for this article; so I don't think that that should be done. It's not known why the values are what they are, and the anthropic principle is so very often mentioned as a possible justification.WolfKeeper (Talk) 23:28, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

In biology, we refer to this as the Panglossian paradigm, in that "this must be the best of all possible universes, for we are in it". This has been compared to reasoning that we have noses to hold our spectacles up, because they serve that function rather well. From a purely logical perspective, this is placing the outcome of an event as justification for its own causation. Thus, according to the anthropic principle, the universe exists with the constants that it does because it produced us, not that the constants exist - and we are therefore a byproduct of that process. Placing this psuedoscientific argument here would make about as much sense as mentioning Intelligent design on the evolution page, and it should therefore be excluded for precisely the same reasons. I'm going to give this a week for discussion and response, and then delete the section with extreme prejudice. Aderksen (talk) 21:11, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Significant physicists have discussed the relationship between the sizes of physical constants and the Anthropic principle and the Fine-tuned universe. Whatever one's opinions may be of the validity of these this is notable enough to be mentioned in the article. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:39, 11 February 2009 (UTC).

Avogadro number or constant?

[Avogadro constant] may be better in this article as it has had no change in meaning whereas Avogadro's number was in the past a dimensionless quantity. SmithBlue (talk) 12:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Informal RfC for 'Speed of light' article

There is a dispute concerning the wording of the 'Light as electromagnetic radiation' section of the 'Speed of light' article. Editors are requested to give their opinions on the 'Speed of light' talk page. We decided to ask on related article talk pages rather than go for a full RfC so that we would get editors with a knowledge of and interest in the subject. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Derived physical constants?

There's a claim that "Using dimensional analysis, it is possible to obtain a number of "derived physical constants" in terms of only five fundamental physical constants". Too bad that, by using those five constants, you can get the fine structure constant which is dimensionless; so dimensional analysis can obtain those "derived constants" up to multiplication by an arbitrary power of α. So how were those constants actually determined? --A. di M. 22:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

This section is completely misplaced. What is described are not "derived physical constants" at all, but a set of units of measurement. They're not even novel, they are known as natural units! The methods for determining the constants vary from constant to constant: the CODATA reference quoted in the article gives details. Physchim62 (talk) 22:52, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Rewrote this section to illustrate relationship to natural units, replaced the lengthy table with an example of Planck units Gblandst (talk) 19:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

naive question

The first section of the article begins "Whereas the values of physical constants do not depend on the unit system used, the numerical values of dimensionful physical constants do depend on the unit used."

My first impression was that there must be a missing word -- should the sentence begin: "...Whereas the values of *dimensionless* physical constants do not..."?? Maybe I am missing the point though. Is there a difference between values depending "on the unit system used" and depending "on the unit used"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Roundmidnight32 (talk • contribs) 13:38, 16 September 2009 (UTC)