Quodlibets & Quiddities

The first number is Ν (nu), and it is huge. It measures the strength of the electrical forces that hold atoms together, divided by the force of gravity between them.

Another number is Ε (epsilon), whose value is 0.007. This defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on earth were made.

The cosmic number Ω (omega) measures the amount of material in our universe.

The next number is the cosmological constant, Λ (lambda), which measures the cosmic repulsion. Our existence requires that Λ should not have been too large.

How tightly stars and galaxies are held together can be expressed as a ratio between the force of gravity and the amount of energy needed to disperse them. This ratio is the fifth number, Q (Q, of course).

The sixth number is the number of spatial dimensions in our world, Δ (delta).

The details of all of this make for some very thought provoking reading. Even the author's asides are fascinating. He describes how there is an absolute limit to how short a time and small of a distance that could ever be measured. It seems that our microscopes and electron microscopes keep improving, so how can there be a limit? It takes more and more energy with ever-shorter wavelengths to see finer detail. At some point the energy concentration would be so high that the quanta would collapse into a black hole. "This happens at the 'Planck length', which is about 10 to the 19th power times smaller than a proton…." Light would take 10 to the minus 43rd power seconds to traverse this distance, and so this is called the 'Planck time.' We can never measure distances smaller than the Planck length and we could never tell which event came first on a time scale smaller than the Planck time.

Reviewed by David Hart