Author notes

COINCIDENCE SIX: 1/1836 IS YOUR LUCKY NUMBER.

alschroeder

on March 9, 2014

Remember, as far as we know, there is no "reason" why
an electron–exactly matched against a proton's
electrical charge–should be so much smaller.  It
just IS. There's a particle called the muon, that has
the exact same negative electrical charge an electron
does, but it's 200 times more massive.  Proton-muon
"atoms" would be unable to create any resonable
chemical complexity–it'd be like trying to sew cloth
with a vibrating chainsaw rather than a
needle.
BTW, the vibrating/wiggling mentioned is quantum
uncertainty of an electron's position, and cannot be
eliminated.
T. Regge remarks that "Our universe would be
determined by the fact that only the choice (mass of
proton/mass of electron) =1837 guarentees that there
are long chain molecules of the right kinds and size
as to make biological phenomena possible."
References for this include THE COSMOLOGICAL
ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE by Barrow and Tipler, THE
CONSTANTS OF NATURE by Barrow, or this excellent
paper on-line,
"The Fine-Tuning of the Universe
for Intelligent Life" —please note, among
other things, the diagram on page 21 of the paper,
which echoes Barrow's similar diagram in THE
CONSTANTS OF NATURE, showing at a glance how the
proton-electron mass ratio taken in one direction
would result in "no ordered structures" and in the
other would result in "no stars". (We'll get to the
fine structure constant, the second variable in that
graph, another time.)
So that's how protons and electrons are different.
Next week, we'll look at how they're the same.
Next week: COINCIDENCE SEVEN–You'll Get a Charge Out
of This.