Surprises in numerical expressions of physical constants

DOI10.4169/AMER.MATH.MONTHLY.123.6.609MaRDI QIDQ4576143zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Ariel Amir, Mikhail Lemeshko, Tadashi Tokieda

Publication date 12 July 2018

Published in The American Mathematical Monthly (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.00299

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Physics (00A79) Evaluation of number-theoretic constants (11Y60) Approximations and expansions (41A99) Combinatorial probability (60C05)

Abstract: In science, as in life, `surprises' can be adequately appreciated only in the presence of a null model, what we expect a priori. In physics, theories sometimes express the values of dimensionless physical constants as combinations of mathematical constants like pi or e. The inverse problem also arises, whereby the measured value of a physical constant admits a `surprisingly' simple approximation in terms of well-known mathematical constants. Can we estimate the probability for this to be a mere coincidence, rather than an inkling of some theory? We answer the question in the most naive form.

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• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 638087 (Why is no real title available?)
• On determining the irrationality of the mean of a random variable

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• A scaling law from discrete to continuous solutions of channel capacity problems in the low-noise limit

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