Is electric charge a fundamental constant?
	While still a student, I tried to grasp the micro-world in a different way to that which was prescribed by generally accepted paradigms. I aimed to unite gravitational and electromagnetic forces in one consistent theory. I soon discovered that in order to do this I needed to go against the contemporary interpretation of quantum mechanics and introduce polarity into the law of gravity. I think I succeeded, at least to a certain extent, but what use is a theory if there is no way of testing it? For this reason I used the special and general theories of relativity to calculate the force effects of two particles which I had designed on the basis of my vision of the micro-world. I was very surprised when I found that their distant force effect corresponded entirely with Coulomb's law. In other words, I had calculated electric charge using the Planck constant and the speed of light: I had found a mathematical construction for the fine structure constant.
	The biggest problem was of course that the calculation was not entirely 'accurate'. I had calculated a value of 1/137.0359990834... while the literature, I soon found, gave a range of values. The accuracy of measurement for these constants was, however, generally greater than the range between the values, and the values obtained depended on the measurement method used and even on the year of measurement. Recently an official theory has emerged which claims that alpha is not actually a constant at all and that it shows time shifts in a cosmological context. For many years I left the problem alone - further research would have led nowhere.
	In 2008, however, a very precise measurement was carried out. The quantum electrodynamics was tested using state-of-the-art measuring technology (see HERE : D.Hanneke, S.Fogwell, G.Gabrielse : New Measurement of the Electron Magnetic Moment and the Fine Structure Constant; Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Physical Review Letters, March 2008 and here : T.Aoyma, M.Hayakawa, T.Kinoshita, M.Nio : Revised value of the eighth-order QED contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron; arXiv:0712.2607v2, February 2008 - see HERE). This measurement showed that the constant equals 1/137.035999084 (51) [measurement error in brackets], which once again confirmed my opinion that my discovery did indeed have something to offer. For this reason I have decided to publish the resulting formula for this constant at the address http://www-troja.fjfi.cvut.cz/~pavel/en/formula.htm .
	The formula is not some kind of hoax - it is based on reality. It is also interesting that the formula for calculating the alpha constant is admirably simple and has an inner beauty (in the past this quality used to be one criterion by which theories were judged, and it was sometimes used as the basis for new postulates - see the Maxwell equation and similar examples). I dealt with the numerical expression by using a short program written in Delphi using Bernoulli numbers. I chose this method because of its accuracy and the rapid convergence of the calculation, although I could have used the Catalan constant ;-) .
	There are many fundamental constants, but I am convinced that electric charge e is not one of them. It contains the relationship e^2 = 2*h*alpha/(mi0*c) where h is the Planck constant, alpha the fine structure constant (now determined by numerical calculation), c the speed of light and mi0 = 4*pi*10-7 [H/m] is the permeability of the vacuum.
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