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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

The core element of the experiment: a crystal containing thorium atoms. (Courtesy: TU Wien) New high-precision laser spectroscopy measurements on thorium-229 nuclei could shed more light on the fine ...

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 ...

Physicists have made the most accurate measurement to date of the fine-structure constant, alpha -- the dimensionless number that is a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force. The new ...

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 ...