Comment by lostemptations5
2 years ago
OP: "It’s essentially asking why is the speed of light 299,798,452 m/s or the gravitational constant 6.67x10-11 Nm2/kg2 I’m sure a universe could work with those constants varied but that’s the one we have in our universe.
There could be hypothetical universes with protons being half of electron and atoms would have twice the protons.
However the fundamental constants are just that. A number that allows us to reason about how the universe works.
As to why the number is that, gotta ask your God why they chose that specific value."
And so the post I responded too said these constants are totally RANDOM / ARBITRARY.
But they cannot be otherwise the universe wouldn't work (as far as we know).
The measurements or units we use to express these are arbitrary-- but the constants themselves are DERIVED from the system we call the universe. Without them the system wouldn't work.
Is this really so controversial?
As I said, people were talking past each other. I don’t agree with the guys argument as to why that matters. I just don’t agree with your explanation.
My objection to your post is that the meter being defined based on physical reality isn’t meaningful. It isn’t the same thing as saying “the speed of light is c because c is the speed of light and we’ve derived it to be c (in our system of units).”
True, you're definitely talking past me here.
The relation between the meter as defined and the speed of light isn’t arbitrary. But the value of c in terms of meters isn’t really privileged compared to the value of c in parsecs: both numerical values are only the number they are because you’ve picked an arbitrary unit to measure them by.
Right. It's not so much that the speed of light itself is arbitrary, it's that the number 299,798,452 is arbitrary. Humans picked it because they liked those units for distance and time.
If we had two different types of universal-constant speed, we could measure the ratios between them. But there's only c.
Charges of elementary particles, on the other hand, we do have multiple examples. And whether we call an electron "-1" or "4895", there is an exact ratio between different particles that is an intriguingly simple number.
The ratio being such a simple number tells us something about the universe, in the way that most constants don't.
Or to put that another way, "299,798,452" is derived from both facts about the universe and arbitrary human choices. "1/3" is only derived from facts about the universe. It being such a simple number then begs for explanation, because humans didn't intervene to make it such a simple number.
And on top of that, if the speed of light or gravitational constant changed by .00001, nothing would happen. If the electron and proton didn't match perfectly, a ton of stuff would break.