John Mikes and Russell Standish deserve the prestidigitation prize for finding
Plank's constant! The prize is worth ten million in gold,which they will share
and which, I am glad to announce, is in my financial capacity to award them.
Since their prodigious feat was performed by simply selecting the units used in
expressing h, the prize will also be formulated in a similar fashion. The unit
used to express the prize will be the gold atom. Ten million gold atoms shared
between them will make each of them a multimillionaire. Congratulations to both
of you!
George Levy
John Mikes wrote:
> > George Levy wrote (Re: Leibnitz semantics): - SNIP, - Russell answered:
> > In what way is the digits of Planck's constant an objective? The
> > numerical value of Planck's constant is determined by the system of
> > measurements you choose. If you use Planck units (Planck length, planck
> > time, Planck mass), Planck's constant is trivially 1.
> >
> > Of more interest is to ask why the human body is an astronomical
> > number of Planck units high, and why our body mass is so high, and why we
> > think so slowly. After all, the units of metre, kilogramme and second
> > are chosen to be within an order of magnitude or two of our own
> > physiological measurements.
> >
> > Of course I can give numerous speculations as to why this might be,
> > but I won't for the moment.
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> Thank you, Russell, for your wise comment. Indeed, IMO Planck's 'units' are
> a quantized semantics of a philosophical identification about our physical
> system.
> Our present observation does not go further than the (now unobservable)
> Planck measures. So the Planck unit is - yes - trivially "1" (for us), but I
> cannot take it for granted in a wider view with a possible further
> "structural" resolution of it.
>
> On your second par: we are still hooked into our anthropocentric system of
> quantities. We may think so slowly, because our mass (inertia, whatever) is
> so "big". Relative to what? the universe thinks (changes) much slower.
>
> John Mikes
> <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
> "http://pages.prodigy.net/jamikes"
Received on Mon Apr 02 2001 - 12:56:53 PDT