〈 Berger | Dillon 〉

Unpopular opinion: it’s just a cosmological constant. No fundamental physics to be discovered. Money better spent on interesting astrophysics rather than framed as H0 debate. @skdhhttps://twitter.com/josh_sokol/status/1152302635711705088 …

I'm sure you would have said the same thing about Rydberg's constant, then.

For the non-physicist, is the above argument that it's no more interesting than, say, getting better precision on something like the Feigenbaum constant?

His argument is that there can be no "understanding" of the cosmological constant. It's just a number that the universe gave us, and there's no deeper physics (called "new physics") that could explain its value. My post was a counterexample of such a constant

Oooh ok, that makes sense now. I mostly stay in the more biological realm and I'm generally ok with my models being "wrong" in the George Box sense, so when physicists get into disputes about models and reality I can't follow because the concern takes some effort to connect to.

I see no reason to believe we have any new physics to be discovered in refining our knowledge of Hubble’s constant over time. And nothing here that points me to one!

Well, sure I do agree if it’s just about refining precision. But your tweet made it seem as if constants are just constants and trying to explain them is a futile endeavor.