The Fundamental Constants

Throwback Thursday: The Fundamental Constants Behind Our Universe

How many does it take to give us our Universe, and what’s left unexplained?

“The joy of life consists in the exercise of one’s energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.” -Aleister Crowley

But the Universe itself experiences continual growth, constant change, and new experiences all the time, and it does so spontaneously.

Image credit: ESA and the Planck collaboration

Image credit: ESA and the Planck collaboration.

And yet, the better we understand our Universe — what the laws are that govern it, what particles inhabit it, and what it looked/behaved like farther and farther back in the distant past — the more inevitable it appears that it would look just as it appears today.