Holger Müller is in the Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. However, the recoil energy is tiny and therefore hard to measure. Laser-based ...

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, ...

Even on a black hole’s turf, an essential constant of nature holds steady. According to standard physics, the fine-structure constant, which governs interactions of electrically charged particles, is ...

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, ...

A team of researchers in Austria has recently demonstrated that the world’s first nuclear clock could help answer whether the fine-structure constant changes over time. The scientists from the Vienna ...

One over 137 - this is one of the most important numbers in physics. It is the approximate value of the so-called fine structure constant - a physical quantity that is of outstanding importance in ...