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http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071220/full/news.2007.389.html
this just came out in Nature News, comment?
To be sure, they are talking about how many DIMENSIONAL fundamental constants you need. The main bunch of constants that people always want to measure and to explain are the dimensionless ones---pure numbers like 1/137, with no units attached.
The idea that you just need two sounds wacky at first, but Nature News is a lot different from the New Scientist. If the Nature group of media publish it maybe there is something to it. George Matsas is at Sao Paolo, Brazil. Probably a colleague of Aldrovandi and Pereira who came out with a weird new version of General Relativity recently. Fits of innovation south of the equator.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.4276
The number of dimensional fundamental constants
George E. A. Matsas, Vicente Pleitez, Alberto Saa, Daniel A. T. Vanzella
7 pages, 2 figures
(Submitted on 27 Nov 2007 (v1), last revised 4 Dec 2007 (this version, v2))
"We revisit, qualify, and objectively resolve the seemingly controversial question about what is the number of dimensional fundamental constants in Nature. For this purpose, we only assume that all we can directly measure are space and time intervals, and that this is enough to evaluate any physical observable. We conclude that the number of dimensional fundamental constants is two. We emphasize that this is an objective result rather than a "philosophical opinion", and we let it clear how it could be refuted in order to prove us wrong. Our conclusion coincides with Veneziano's string-theoretical one but our arguments are not based on any particular theory. As a result, this implies that one of the three usually considered fundamental constants "G", "c" or "h" can be eliminated and we show explicitly how this can be accomplished."
this just came out in Nature News, comment?
To be sure, they are talking about how many DIMENSIONAL fundamental constants you need. The main bunch of constants that people always want to measure and to explain are the dimensionless ones---pure numbers like 1/137, with no units attached.
The idea that you just need two sounds wacky at first, but Nature News is a lot different from the New Scientist. If the Nature group of media publish it maybe there is something to it. George Matsas is at Sao Paolo, Brazil. Probably a colleague of Aldrovandi and Pereira who came out with a weird new version of General Relativity recently. Fits of innovation south of the equator.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.4276
The number of dimensional fundamental constants
George E. A. Matsas, Vicente Pleitez, Alberto Saa, Daniel A. T. Vanzella
7 pages, 2 figures
(Submitted on 27 Nov 2007 (v1), last revised 4 Dec 2007 (this version, v2))
"We revisit, qualify, and objectively resolve the seemingly controversial question about what is the number of dimensional fundamental constants in Nature. For this purpose, we only assume that all we can directly measure are space and time intervals, and that this is enough to evaluate any physical observable. We conclude that the number of dimensional fundamental constants is two. We emphasize that this is an objective result rather than a "philosophical opinion", and we let it clear how it could be refuted in order to prove us wrong. Our conclusion coincides with Veneziano's string-theoretical one but our arguments are not based on any particular theory. As a result, this implies that one of the three usually considered fundamental constants "G", "c" or "h" can be eliminated and we show explicitly how this can be accomplished."
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