The Emperor's New Constants

J. Rogers, SE Ohio

Once upon a time, in the great Kingdom of Physics, there lived an Emperor who loved elegant theories above all else. One day, two cunning weavers arrived at the palace.

"Your Majesty," they announced, "we can weave you the most magnificent garments ever conceived - robes woven from fundamental constants themselves!"

"Fundamental constants?" asked the Emperor.

"Yes, sire! We shall weave threads of dimensional action scaled by factors of 2π, stabilized through renormalization group flow across energy regimes. The fabric will be held together by gauge symmetries and adorned with Feynman diagrams of exquisite complexity."

The Emperor was intrigued. "And what will these robes look like?"

"Ah," said the first weaver, "that is the garment's most remarkable property. The robes appear invisible to anyone who is unfit for their position or hopelessly stupid. Only those with true understanding can perceive their subtle beauty."

The Emperor hired them at once, giving them a room filled with textbooks, blackboards, and generous research grants.

The weavers set up their loom and pretended to work. "We're setting ℏ = c = G = k_B = 1," they announced to visitors. "This reveals the natural units where all physics becomes manifest."

The Emperor sent his honest old Chancellor to check on progress.

The Chancellor entered the room and saw... nothing. The loom was empty. But he heard the weavers speak:

"Observe how the gauge bosons mediate the interactions! See the spontaneous symmetry breaking that generates the mass terms! Note the holographic correspondence emerging at the event horizon!"

The Chancellor saw no fabric at all. I must be stupid, he thought. I cannot let anyone know.

"It's... magnificent!" he reported to the Emperor. "The quantum chromodynamic flux is particularly impressive!"

Next, the Emperor sent his Court Physicist, known for his published papers and numerous citations.

The Physicist entered and saw the empty loom. But he too heard the weavers:

"The path integral formulation makes the structure clear! The dimensional regularization preserves gauge invariance! The beta functions govern the running of the coupling constants!"

My god, thought the Physicist. I've spent 20 years mastering this framework. I have tenure. I cannot admit I see nothing.

"Remarkable!" he declared. "The renormalization group flow is handled with extraordinary subtlety!"

Word spread through the kingdom. All the professors, researchers, and graduate students came to admire the incredible garments. Each saw nothing, but praised the work enthusiastically, for no one wanted to appear unfit or stupid.

Finally, the great day arrived. The Emperor would wear his new robes in a procession through the capital.

The weavers held up empty hands. "Your Majesty, the robes are complete! Here is the jacket, woven from Planck-scale superstring vibrations! Here are the trousers, stabilized by supersymmetric partner particles! And here is the cape, demonstrating conformal invariance at criticality!"

The Emperor stripped off his old clothes. He saw nothing in the mirror, but said nothing, for he could not admit that he saw no clothes at all.

"Perfect!" declared the Court Physicist. "The dimensional consistency is impeccable!"

"Exquisite!" agreed the Chancellor. "The gauge structure is particularly elegant!"

And so the Emperor processed through the streets in his underwear.

The crowds lined the route. All had heard that only the wise could see the remarkable garments.

"Magnificent!" they cried.

"The spontaneous symmetry breaking is sublime!" shouted a postdoc.

"I've never seen such beautiful renormalization!" called a tenured professor.

"The path integral formulation is breathtaking!" yelled a department chair.

Then a child's voice cut through the crowd: "But he hasn't got anything on!"

The father quickly hushed the boy. "Quiet, son! You simply haven't taken enough quantum field theory to appreciate the subtlety!"

But the child persisted, louder: "He's just wearing underwear! There are no clothes!"

A nearby graduate student turned to the father. "You fool! Those garments are woven from threads of quantum chromodynamic flux stabilized by renormalization group flow! Only the wisest can perceive their subtle interplay! Perhaps your son should pursue a different field - clearly he lacks the sophisticated intuition required for modern physics."

"Yes," agreed a professor, "the child is clearly missing the deeper structure. Once he's spent a decade working in natural units, he'll develop the proper appreciation."

But an elderly physicist, near retirement, leaned down to the child. "What do you see, exactly?"

"The Emperor is in his underwear," said the child. "There's nothing else there."

"And what should be there?"

"Clothes," said the child. "Regular clothes. Made of fabric."

The old physicist straightened up slowly. He looked at the Emperor. He looked at the crowd of experts all praising the invisible garments. He looked at the child.

"What is fabric?" he asked quietly, to no one in particular. "What are... clothes?"

The procession continued. The crowd continued praising the Emperor's magnificent outfit. The physics journals published detailed analyses of the garment's geometric structure. Research grants were awarded to study similar applications of natural units to clothing.

The weavers retired wealthy, having published extensively on their innovative techniques.

And the child grew up, learned that the invisible clothes were actually quite sophisticated, got a physics PhD, and eventually taught graduate students the proper way to appreciate the subtle beauty of constants.

Only occasionally, late at night, grading problem sets, would he remember what he'd seen as a child, and wonder.

But by then he had tenure, so he dismissed the thought and returned to his papers on dimensional regularization.

And everyone agreed that the Emperor had been magnificently dressed that day, in garments too subtle for the uneducated to perceive.