Why 1/137? Constants, three dimensions and a simpler foundation of reality

Imagine being given the source code of a perfectly functioning universe.

The equations are elegant. The symmetries are beautiful. The program passes all tests.

But at the beginning of the file you will find a long list of values:

• strength of electromagnetic interaction;
• masses of the electron, quarks and neutrinos;
• mixing angles;
• intensity of gravity;
• size of dark energy;
• number of particle generations;
• the number of dimensions in which the world appears spatial.

The program works, but many numbers had to be entered by someone.

Modern physics is in a similar situation.

It can predict results with incredible accuracy once the parameters are known. It knows far less about why the parameters have these particular values.

If General ITHKOR were to apply, one of its biggest promises would be to transform at least some of these numbers from loose settings to consequences of deeper informational consistency.

Reader agreement: ITHKOR has not yet derived the value of any fundamental constant or the number of world dimensions. This article describes what such a program might look like and what it would have to accomplish to be more than an elegant story.

First, an unpleasant note: not every number is equally mysterious

The speed of light has an exact value in SI:

299 792 458 m/s.

Planck’s constant and elementary charge are also precisely defined in today’s SI system.

However, this does not mean that we have explained them physically. It means that we used them to define the meter, kilogram and other units.

If we were using other units, the numerical value of c could be 1. The physics would not change.

Therefore, when asking the question “why this particular number?” the most important dimensionless constants – pure ratios agreed upon by all observers, no matter what meters and seconds they use.

The best known is the fine structure constant:

α ≈ 1/137,036

It determines the strength of the electromagnetic interaction at low energies.

And immediately comes another nuance: even the famous 1/137 is not the only invariant value at all scales. Electromagnetic coupling with energy “runs”. At higher energies, the effective value is different, approximately closer to 1/128 at the electroweak scale.

Therefore, the right question is not only:

Why is α approximately 1/137?

But:

Why does electromagnetic coupling have this low-energy value and why does it change with energy in exactly the observed way?

That’s a much tougher goal.

The universe has more free numbers than it seems

The Standard Model of particle physics is extremely successful. Nevertheless, it contains a number of parameters that must be measured:

• coupling constants of forces;
• masses of quarks and leptons;
• Higgs field parameters;
• mixing angles and phases;
• after the inclusion of neutrinos, additional weights and mixing.

Physics can calculate incredibly accurate outputs from these inputs.

However, it cannot explain why the electron is much lighter than the top quark, why there are three generations, or why the mixing matrix has the observed structure.

And then there’s the cosmological constant.

The observed acceleration of the universe corresponds to a very small energy scale of dark energy. Naïve estimates of quantum vacuum contributions can be absurdly large compared to observation. The exact form of the problem depends on the formulation and regularization, but the fundamental stress remains one of the greatest open questions in physics.

So the world does not act only as a system of laws.

It also acts as a very oddly tuned point in the vast space of possible laws.

ITHKOR: constants as stable fixed points

What could General ITHKOR add to that?

Instead of imagining constants as numbers written at the beginning of the universe, General ITHKOR could understand them as stable ratios to which an informational system must settle in order to remain locally consistent and capable of creating records over the long term.

Let’s imagine a large space of possible local rules.

Most of them can lead to one of three outcomes:

• the system immediately collapses;
• the system freezes into a trivial state;
• the system creates chaos without stable objects and without long-term memory.

Only small parameter areas can support:

• causality;
• stable excitations;
• rich but controlled dynamics;
• correctable records;
• scale hierarchy from particles to galaxies.

The constants could then denote an island of dynamic and informational stability.

That would fit the language of ITHKOR: not an infinite space of arbitrary settings, but a map of islands, boundaries, and phase transitions.

But watch out for the trap.

To say “our universe is stable because it has stable constants” is a circular explanation.

A real theory would have to calculate a particular point or a narrow set of points from minimal rules – without knowing the correct answer in advance.

How c, ℏ and G could be read

Three constants make up the Planck units:

• c – invariant causal scale;
• ℏ – quantum of effect, i.e. scale of quantum phase and action;
• G – the strength of the bond between energy and geometry.

In the information picture, they could correspond to three different structural properties:

c: slope of the causal boundary

Not “processor frequency”, but the maximum way in which local influence can fold into emergent spacetime.

ℏ: distinguishable quantum phase scale

It could determine how amplitudes and phases translate into physically different events and recordings.

G: responsiveness of emergent geometry

It could express how strongly the energy or information content changes the effective relationships between events.

However, these are only roles, not derivations.

The most important thing would not be to calculate the c number in meters per second. It depends on the units.

It would be important to derive dimensionless ratios, such as the relative strength of gravity to electromagnetism, mass ratios, or combinations of constants that have the same meaning for every observer.

Why exactly three spatial dimensions?

This is one of the biggest questions that we almost stop noticing because the answer is always right in front of our eyes.

The world has three large spatial dimensions.

Why not two? Why not four? Why not ten?

In the information-graphic architecture, the dimension would not have to be a declaration in the program header. It could be a macroscopic property of connectivity.

If the number of available regions up to the distance r grows as r^d, the system has an effective dimension of d.

So a generic ITHKOR could ask a specific question:

Under what local rules, capacity limits, and requirements for stable records will the network self-stabilize to a phase with an effective spatial dimension close to three?

A possible intuition is that the three dimensions offer an exceptional compromise:

• sufficient connectivity;
• the possibility of stable nodes, waves and complex structures;
• but not such high connectivity that locality loses its meaning.

However, this is not yet the result. Theory would have to show that the three-dimensional phase is a robust output, not a hand-picked setup.

It would also have to explain why time has a different signature from space.

What about 10 or 11 dimensions?

It is often said in popular debate that string theory “needs 11 dimensions”.

More precisely:

• superstring theories are naturally formulated in ten-dimensional space-time;
• M-theory leads to an eleven-dimensional space-time, i.e. to ten spatial dimensions and one temporal one.

These dimensions are not added just for effect. They arise from the mathematical conditions of consistency of the theory. The additional dimensions must then be compactified or otherwise hidden so that we see a 3+1 world at normal energies.

ITHKOR could try another route.

Instead of additional spatial directions, the additional structure could be carried in the internal state space of the nodes:

• types of ties;
• phases;
• charge sectors;
• topological classes;
• transformation rules;
• local symmetries.

What another theory geometrizes as a compact dimension, ITHKOR could represent as an internal information structure.

Such a description could be intuitively simpler.

But simpler vocabulary does not mean simpler physics.

If ITHKOR wants to claim that it doesn’t need a 10- or 11-dimensional spacetime, it has to derive from its own architecture what these theories are looking for:

• calibration symmetries;
• spectrum of particles;
• fermions and their chirality;
• quantum gravity;
• correct anomalies and their interference;
• a low-energy world similar to ours.

Otherwise, it just moved the complexity from the geometry to the names of the states.

Masses as natural frequencies of the network

One possible way is to understand weight as a property of a stable information mode.

A musical instrument does not produce arbitrary tones. Geometry, stress and boundary conditions will select certain natural frequencies.

Likewise, an information network could support only certain stable excitations. Their “eigenvalues” would manifest as masses and bonds in an effective physical description.

The three generations of particles could be three stable modes of the same basic structure.

The mixing angles could express the overlap between different bases of stable modes.

It sounds promising.

And it’s still only a possibility.

The real success would only be if the correct weight and mixing ratios came out of one mechanism without separately tuning each value.

Fine tuning or choosing a stable island?

When physical constants change slightly in mental models, chemistry, stellar stability, or structure formation can change dramatically.

This leads to the problem of fine-tuning and to anthropic arguments.

ITHKOR might offer another perspective:

Maybe it’s not that someone set the numbers to create life.

Perhaps most of the parameters do not create a long-term consistent, local and memory-stable universe at all. Our point would then not be chosen because of man, but would belong to a small class of systems that can maintain a rich history.

That would be more interesting than pure “we’re lucky”.

But again: it must lead to a calculation. If, after observing any value, it is always said that it is stable, we have not explained anything.

What would be a real breakthrough?

Not another picture where 137 comes out.

Not a numerological combination of known constants.

Not an optimization with twenty free weights that hits the right value.

For example, a real breakthrough would look like this:

1. define simple local rules without embedded experimental constants;
2. show that the system has only a small class of stable scale limits;
3. derive a dimensionless ratio from them;
4. predict its change with energy;
5. and correctly hit the value that was not used in debugging.

It would be even stronger to infer a relationship between two hitherto independent parameters.

The theory does not have to solve all the numbers of the universe at once.

All it takes is for the first time to change one of them from a measured input to a real prediction.

What we know, what we assume and what is missing

What we know: The Standard Model and cosmology use a number of measured parameters. Dimensionless constants, mass ratios, and mixing parameters carry unit-independent physical content. Electromagnetic coupling changes with energy.

What General ITHKOR would assume: Constants and number of dimensions are stable fixed points or inherent modes of the deeper information architecture, not arbitrary numbers inserted from the outside.

What to prove: Derive at least one new dimensionless parameter or relation, its scaling behavior, and a 3+1 dimensional low-energy world without backfitting.

The simplest theory is not the one with the fewest words

It’s tempting to say:

ITHKOR is simpler because it does not need additional dimensions.

Maybe.

But true simplicity is not measured by the number of images in a popular article.

It is measured by the number of independent assumptions, free parameters, and additional corrections that the theory needs to reproduce the world.

If General ITHKOR could derive from a small set of information rules:

• three dimensions;
• causal boundary;
• quantum phases;
• particle families;
• and at least part of the dimensionless constants,

then it would really offer a simpler foundation.

Until then, 1/137 is not an answer, but an invitation.

Series: If General ITHKOR were true — part 3/4
Previous part: Space and time as outcomes
Next part: The dark universe
Current project map: ITHKOR theory

Expert reference points

• CODATA Recommended Values of the Fundamental Physical Constants: 2022 — NIST
• The fine-structure constant — NIST
• How fundamental are fundamental constants? — M.J. Duff
• Review of Particle Physics 2025 — Particle Data Group
• The Standard Model — CERN
• String Theory Dynamics in Various Dimensions — Edward Witten
• Heterotic and Type I String Dynamics from Eleven Dimensions — Hořava, Witten