Owlet puzzle #11
Released Thursday, July 16, 2026 UTC
137
the answer for puzzle #11
The five clues
- A three-digit prime, digit sum eleven.
- A prime that appears in the reciprocal of a famous physical coupling constant.
- Feynman called it 'a magic number that comes to us with no understanding.'
- Its reciprocal, ≈ 1/137, governs the strength of electromagnetism.
- Also the atomic number of the hypothetical element 'feynmanium'.
Backstory
137 is the closest integer to α⁻¹ ≈ 137.036, the inverse fine-structure constant — a coincidence Feynman called 'one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics.' It's prime, and expressible as 4² + 11² = 137, with no other representation as a sum of two squares.
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