In sports and in cosmology, the rules of the game aren't supposed to change as you go along. Athletes call this playing fair. Cosmologists call it the cosmological principle, and it means that the ...

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 ...

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, ...

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, ...

The fine structure constant is one of the most important natural constants of all. At TU Wien, a remarkable way of measuring it has been found—it shows up as a rotation angle. One over 137: This is ...

Electronics is really an applied branch of physics, so it isn’t surprising that if you are serious about your electronics, you probably know a little physics, too. If you’ve ever heard the term “fine ...