- the 33rd prime number; the next is 139, with which it comprises a twin prime, and thus 137 is a Chen prime.
@CodaCoder is likely subject to Chen’s Theorem though some aspects may devolve to Goldbach’s conjecture.
IT IS a well-kept secret, but we know the answer to life, the universe and everything. It’s not 42 – it’s 1/137.
There's a glitch at the edge of the universe that could remake physics | New Scientist
Probably the best example of a pure number (it’s expressed as itself, not in relation to anything else), 137 seems to show up “everywhere” a physicist looks.
137 is prime, and given that it’s denoted by the Greek symbol α (alpha) it arguably takes primacy over pretty much everything else in physics.
Feynman said, “every physicist of worth should worry about it”. (Probably no accident it comes up in Feynman’s Conjecture and sprinkled like salt and pepper over QED).
Anecdotally, Wolfgang Pauli died in a room numbered 137. 
https://www.physlink.com/Education/Askexperts/ae186.cfm
I also recall, though I can’t find a good reference for it, the speed of a hydrogen atom’s orbiting electron is c/137 (c=speed of light).
So, now you know 
(that should stall the thread 
)
Electron’s don’t actually orbit atoms. That theory was discredited almost as soon as it was created, yet it captured the popular imagination and is still depicted in many textbooks, logos, and popular culture.
No. Of course not. But taking this chat into the realms of “fields” would be silly.
That reference is out there though it may not say “orbit”, granted.
Some one past their prime, did you?
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Whoah! That is a fascinating article that explains a lot about the attraction of 1/137! The “fistful of constants” is icing on the number that includes the Higgs Boson.
Yep. It’s almost impossible to state how all-pervading it is. Pops up in harmonics too – the 5th harmonic I think? (I’m really digging deep now, may have some of that wrong). But it being present in harmony (music theory) always intrigues me.
Might have read that in “This is your brain on music” (fun book).
I’m a bit of an idiot. First I have to go basic. Cesium 137 are a futurepop group with songs like Peripheral. Spooky is Psalm 137 as “The Rivers Of Babylon” thing went epic in song.
I’ll comment more subito (soon).
TT
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Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah is a Hindi sitcom in which episode 137 is superb.
In Italy the recent pop singer Emanuelino did the tattoo “137” at the end of the song “137”.
I’ll comment more domani (tomorrow),
TT
33rd Prime? That nice, since I have long held 33 to be my lucky number (purely playful) and unfortunately I am a prime number tragic, although not a trained mathematician, I have spent hundred’s of ours playing with them. By the way I think numbers are magic, but magic is not numbers meaning numerology and trivial palindrome’s etc… that stuff bores me. My only exception being my “lucky number”.
I actually think I may have found things worthy of publishing about primes, yet the gap between my conceptual models and those of professional mathematics is so large I have held back so far.
I have long felt tiddlywiki with numbered tiddlers would make a nice evolving repository for collecting information about each number as I come upon it. It would also be possible to write the code to determine things about any number such as is it a square, a prime or membership of another group.
I recently found this you tube from a favorite “Veritasium” (from a number of science and maths channels I follow) The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve - Collatz Conjecture - YouTube And thought there was value in using this to generate hierarchies as test data in tiddlywiki and other interesting solutions in tiddlywiki.
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Right. I’m sure that someone mathematically inclined could, if they wanted, use TW well to directly illustrate math patterns.
An upaprciated use of Primes is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-adic_number(s)
which converge as the primes get larger.
Its quite useful in defining the characteristics of people that can effectively collaborate.
Enjoy.
- Hans
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@Hans_Wobbe, Euclid’s theorem posits there are infinitely many prime numbers so you may be busy a while 
@TiddlyTweeter - indeed!
The goodness is that tag values can be thought of as PrimeNumbers. Using them as a coefficient in a PositionalNotation gives you an amazing encode capability.
Consider that just 2 positions of 50 meta values gives some 2500 distinct values. Combined with a Topic prefix, yields an inexhaustible supply of tiddlernames that are trivial to search. And that’s just for title fields!
All in all, it will last me for the rest of my life.
I think that true. I’m not so clear how you’d practically implement that?
I will try crafting an easy example on the weekend. After all,I keep prattle going on about this,so it’s past time for me to do a it of show and tell.
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