Albert Einstein was aware of Sommerfeld’s work, when he postulated his “Eselei” (whether it was or not..?) the following year...
Richard P. Feynmann in The Strange Theory of Light and Matter ( Princeton University Press, 1985, page 129) says of 137: “It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.”
So, what’s to worry about..?
Well, it appears that this fine constant might hold the key to the makings of our universe. With the emphasis on our universe, since there may be others, perhaps many others, even an unimaginable number of others. If there was only a slight variant to the setting, nothing would be as we know it. We wouldn’t be, period. The thought of all that at times becomes overbearing. It could compel any mind on a high wire into maddening loops and spins. Imagine... Hundreds of billions of galaxies, of which our Milky Way is a rather small one, eventually to be gobbled up by the larger Andromeda. 70 sextillions (and counting into the zillions) of solar bodies, 10 times the amount of grains of sand on our little planet. Let alone the impossible amount of satellites in the orbits of their stars.
Can that be for real..?
All that in just one universe, precisely our universe..?
Either, in all relativeness, we are tinier than tiny tinies, and we are, or whatever is out there is nothing but a giant illusion, a cosmic hall of mirrors of sorts, which is playing tricks with our modus of perception. Such realization would compute with theories that nothing is real, that we and everything we perceive is but virtual. Of course that would imply the existence of a kind of a ConsoleMeister, an intelligence of another degree, albeit one that would be, in all probability, hugely bored.
”Let the games begin”, or what..?
One of humanity’s hypothetical CM’s supposedly had found everything he had created to be good... But what if the true meaning had somehow gotten lost in the twists and turns of the pipeline..? Interesting, would be my humble take. We all just may go through the generational motions of existing in a giant bubble of make believe. A giant bubble to us, mind you, which, in reality (what reality..?) could be of no size whatsoever, since size is just another aspect of our, perhaps illusionary, dimensional perception.