
Miracle Numbers Such as “56″  - wglb
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/miracle-numbers-such-as-56/
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jessriedel
The fine structure constant is special for completely different reasons than
the mathematical curiosities discussed in the rest of the post.

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reappear
But Feynman's point is: "Maybe not." We already know a computer-in-the-world
can compute the fine-structure constant, in much the same way it computes its
own temperature and fan speed. (I don't know enough physics to be at all sure
the previous statement is true or even meaningful.) If you wanted to gauge how
powerful a computer-in-the-world could be, or how powerful a computer-the-
world's-in could be, you'd want to know whether a Turing machine could output
the fine-structure constant, too, just as though it were pi or e or the first
zero of a Bessel function.

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jessriedel
Oh, I understand that we hope (and probably expect) that the fine-structure
constant will turn out to be some mathematically well defined number derivable
from an underlying theory. But that doesn't mean it's out of place on a list
of _integers_ which are interesting for purely mathematical reasons.

