"The secret of the Universe is not 42, according to a new theory, but the unimaginably larger number 10122. Scott Funkhouser of the Military College of South Carolina (called The Citadel) in Charleston has shown how this number - which is bigger than the number of particles in the Universe - keeps popping up when several of the physical constants and parameters of the Universe are combined1. This 'coincidence', he says, is surely significant, hinting at some common principle at work behind the scenes.
The number first turned up when, more than a decade ago, physicists discovered that the expanding Universe is accelerating. This implies that there is a force that opposes gravity on very large scales, which physicists call dark energy. It is quantified by a parameter called the cosmological constant.
One interpretation of dark energy is that it results from the energy of empty space, called vacuum energy. The laws of quantum physics imply that empty space is not empty at all, but filled with particles popping in and out of existence. This particle 'fizz' should push objects apart, just as dark energy seems to require. But the theoretical value of this energy is immense - so huge that it should blow atoms apart, rather than just causing the Universe to accelerate. Physicists think that some unknown force nearly perfectly cancels out the vacuum energy, leaving only the amount seen as dark energy to push things apart. This cancellation is imperfect to an absurdly fine margin: the unknwon 'energy' differs from the vacuum energy by just one part in 10122. It seems incredible that any physical mechanism could be so finely poised as to reduce the vacuum energy to within a whisker of zero, but it seems to be so"
Cosmic coincidence link
The number first turned up when, more than a decade ago, physicists discovered that the expanding Universe is accelerating. This implies that there is a force that opposes gravity on very large scales, which physicists call dark energy. It is quantified by a parameter called the cosmological constant.
One interpretation of dark energy is that it results from the energy of empty space, called vacuum energy. The laws of quantum physics imply that empty space is not empty at all, but filled with particles popping in and out of existence. This particle 'fizz' should push objects apart, just as dark energy seems to require. But the theoretical value of this energy is immense - so huge that it should blow atoms apart, rather than just causing the Universe to accelerate. Physicists think that some unknown force nearly perfectly cancels out the vacuum energy, leaving only the amount seen as dark energy to push things apart. This cancellation is imperfect to an absurdly fine margin: the unknwon 'energy' differs from the vacuum energy by just one part in 10122. It seems incredible that any physical mechanism could be so finely poised as to reduce the vacuum energy to within a whisker of zero, but it seems to be so"
Cosmic coincidence link
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