The Eddington-Dirac number is a dimensionless number of magnitude roughly 1040 that P. A. M. Dirac produced by considering a number of ratios between microscopic and macroscopic scales, and the effects of different forces. According to his "large numbers hypothesis", the apparently surpisingly similar ratios between very different phenomena were presumed to have some deeper cosmological significance.
Most scientists now believe these ideas to be numerology without any physical significance.
Further reading
- Dirac, P. A. M. "The Cosmological Constants." Nature 139 (1937) 323.
- Dirac, P. A. M. "Cosmological Models and the Large Numbers Hypothesis." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A 338 (1974).
See also
External links
Last updated: 05-09-2005 20:00:49
Last updated: 10-29-2005 02:13:46
