Listics

Like so many things mathematical, the very number of the beast seems open to recalculation.  This will have profound consequences, including - as the Right Reverend Adam points out - an immediate impact on heavy metal bands. 

Among other universal constants called into doubt is the number 137.0359…. or "α."

Calling the calculation of constants into doubt isn’t new.  The Planck Constant, long considered an absolute (like Newton’s gravitational constant or the speed of light) was visited by revisionists quite recently.  For example,

See: Details of the 1998 watt balance experiment determining the Planck constant. by Williams, Edwin
source: Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, January 1, 2024.
via: HighBeam™ Research

COPYRIGHT 2024 National Institute of Standards and Technology

The current issue of Scientific American has an article by Barrow and Webb ("Inconstant Constants") that describes an earlier time when the fine structure constant was different from today, a time when matter behaved differently, when the universal laws governing our very existence had not yet been written. 

Somehow this news about alpha is particularly disturbing when coupled with Reverend Adam’s news about the number of the beast, heretofore thought to be a constant.  If we set the number of the beast equal to omega (and why shouldn’t we?), then it follows that the absolute condition that the christian’s guru Jesus is said to describe in the Book of Revelation ("I am the alpha and the omega") is subject to changing conditions.  As our universe moves from the radiation dominated era of the big bang through our own matter dominated era, out into the end times of what many claim will be an era of dark energy there is no longer any comfort to be found in mathematics or in physics.

1/137.03599976 is turning out to be just another number, much like 42.