Dear all, I have just added this latest discovery of mine to Chapter 21 of my TYCHOS book (2nd Edition).
THE TYCHOS - AND THE "MAGIC" 137 NUMBER
Our earthly clocks can be as many as 16.5 minutes 'out of synch' in relation to the Sun at both ends of a six month period (e.g. mid-April to mid-october). According to our clocks, a solar day lasts on average for about 1436.1 minutes, yet since the Sun can oscillate around its 'mean zenith' over a six-month period by up to 16.5 minutes, we may reasonably posit that the "true mean solar day" corresponds to 1452.6 minutes (1436.1 + 16.5) of "absolute solar time". We see that 1452.6 min ≈ 24.21 h.
In 24.21 hours, the Sun will move along its orbit by about 2 595 941.5 km (107226 km/h X 24.21 h ≈ 2 595 941.5). This value turns out to be most interesting, because it is almost precisely 1/137th of the circumference of the Earth’s PVP orbit of 355 724 597km (as proposed by the TYCHOS model):
355 724 597km / 2 595 941.5 km = **137.031**.
In other words, the distance covered by the Earth in one Great Year (as it completes one PVP orbit in 25344 years) is just about 137.031 times the daily distance covered by the Sun. Or, to put it another way: for each daily rotation of the Earth, the Sun covers a distance equal to 1/137th of the Earth's orbital circumference. Well, it so happens that this peculiar 1/137 ratio is **one of the most famous and hotly-debated ‘mysteries' in physics!**
"Why the number 137 is one of the greatest mysteries in physics. Does the Universe around us have a fundamental structure that can be glimpsed through special numbers? The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) famously thought so, saying there is a number that all theoretical physicists of worth should “worry about”. He called it “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man”. That magic number, called the fine structure constant, is a fundamental constant, with a value which nearly equals 1/137. Or **1/137.03599913**, to be precise. It is denoted by the Greek letter alpha – α.(...) Appearing at the intersection of such key areas of physics as relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics is what gives 1/137 its allure." ["Why the number 137 is one of the greatest mysteries in physics" - by Paul Ratner (2018)](https://bigthink.com/hard-science/number-137-physics/)
In fact, the number 137 has preoccupied our world's most eminent physicists for decades, including the Nobel Prize-winning Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) who was obsessed with it his whole life: _“When I die my first question to the Devil will be: What is the meaning of the fine structure constant?”_ Pauli joked. Physicist Laurence Eaves, a professor at the University of Nottingham, thinks the number 137 would be the one you’d signal to the aliens to indicate that we have some measure of mastery over our planet and understand quantum mechanics. The aliens would know the number as well, especially if they developed advanced sciences. ["Fine Structure Constant - Sixty Symbols" (a short Youtube video featuring Professor Eaves)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlSLIW0gZtk)
Without delving too deeply into nuclear physics, a domain beyond the scope of this book, suffice to remind the reader that electrons are believed to revolve at high speeds around an atom's nucleus (in 1912, Niels Bohr proposed his now-famous model of the atom, where the electrons orbit around the atomic nucleus "much like planets orbit the Sun"). Today, theoretical physicists refer to the perplexing, more recently-discovered 1/137 ratio as the "fine-structure constant α" (or the "coupling constant") of the electromagnetic force that binds atoms together.
"Perhaps the most intriguing of the dimensionless constants is the fine-structure constant α. It was first determined in 1916, when quantum theory was combined with relativity to account for details or ‘fine structure’ in the atomic spectrum of hydrogen. In the theory, α is the speed of the electron orbiting the hydrogen nucleus divided by c. It has the value 0.0072973525698, or almost exactly 1/137. Today, within quantum electrodynamics (the theory of how light and matter interact), α defines the strength of the electromagnetic force on an electron. This gives it a huge role. Along with gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism defines how the Universe works. But no one has yet explained the value 1/137, a number with no obvious antecedents or meaningful links."_ ["LIGHT DAWNS" - by Sidney Perkowitz (2015)](https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-the-speed ... d-of-light)
The "magic" 137 number is also described as a constant related to an electron's magnetic moment, or the "torque" that it experiences in a magnetic field. In the TYCHOS, of course, the Sun could be imagined as the "electron" that revolves at high speed around the spinning "nucleus"(which we may tentatively envision as 'the barycentric magnetic field' constituted by the Earth's PVP orbit). As we saw above, _for every diurnal rotation of the Earth, the Sun moves by a distance corresponding to 1/137th of the circumference of the Earth' PVP orbit._ Could this Sun-Earth 1/137-relationship (exhibited in the TYCHOS model) be purely accidental? Or could it perhaps help elucidate this 137-riddle that still has our world's theoretical physicists fruitlessly scratching their heads?

Dulcis in fundo, we then have this quote by John K. Webb (of the University of New South Wales, Australia), arguably the world's foremost researcher of the mysterious 137 number, a.k.a. the 'fine-structure constant Alpha': "There's something stange going on... a spatial variation... because when we look in one direction of the Universe we see Alpha being a little bit smaller - and when we look in exactly the opposite direction it's a little bit bigger."
Source: "Is Our Entire Universe Held Together By One Mysterious Number?"
In another speech, John K. Webb further muses about the 'very strange' issue of the observed, opposed variations of the constant Alpha. He explains that the two sets of data he studies are collected by two of the world's largest observatories (the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the VLT in Chile), located practically on the opposite sides of our planet: "Using the Keck telescope, it seems as if Alpha decreases, while using the VLT, it seems as if Alpha increases. Very strange..." Once more TYCHOS model offers a plain explanation for this 'strange phenomenon': since the Earth is slowly proceeding at 1.6 km/h along its PVP orbit (along a virtually straight line), the stars "to our left" will seem to move in the opposite direction of the stars "to our right". This is also why the stars exhibit both 'positive' and 'negative' parallax - as will be thoroughly expounded and illustrated in Chapter 25. But the best is yet to come - with regards to professor Webb's most rigorous and exacting research:
As we can read in the Wikipedia's "Fine-Structure Constant" entry, John K. Webb's first, groundbreaking findings (published in 1999) reported a minuscule variation of the Alpha constant ("In 1999, a team led by John K. Webb of the University of New South Wales claimed the first detection of a variation in α.")_ Now, this variation of Aplha amounted to about "0.0000057" (of the 137 value).
We see that 0.0000057 is 0.0000041% of 137 - and 0.0000041% of 939 943 910 km (i.e. the Sun's orbital circumference) is 38.537km.
Well, in the TYCHOS model - as you may recall from Chapter 11 - the Earth moves each day along its PVP orbit by 38.428km !
So could this minuscule 'Alpha variation' that John K. Webb detected possibly be directly related to the Earth's diurnal motion? If not, we shall have to chalk this up yet again to some extraordinary coincidence, the odds of which you may choose to characterize as "astronomical" or "atomical"...
In conclusion, as assessed within the TYCHOS paradigm, the 1/137 ratio would not only seem to be 'reflected' by the Sun's daily motion vis-à-vis the "nucleus" represented by the Earth's PVP orbit, but its tiny observed variation can also be shown to be ascribable to the daily motion of the Earth itself! One can only marvel at the explanatory power of the TYCHOS model which, as we progressively apply its tenets to each and all empirically-observed cosmic motions, would even appear to extend to arcane quandaries of physics such as the pesky mystery known as the "1/137 fine-structure constant".
A recommended viewing: "Why Is 1/137 One of the Greatest Unsolved Problems In Physics?" - by PBS SPace Time
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Dear Cluesforum readers, allow me to say that this is a "BOOM" - of nuclear proportions!

