Since I came to term with my limited capacity to understand those mathematics. I’ve decided to enjoy it like the match selling little girl that ate stale bread while smelling the roast. Based on this very remote understanding of the matter, My theory is that all those possible universes are actually just one and that what we are observing or experiencing is the part we are tuned to. Like a radio receiving all the waves but being tuned to a single channel.
Can those values actually go above 1 even in theory?
Well… The effecrive coupling constant changes with energy. A high energy experiment behaves differently than at lower energies. The coupling constant is above 1 for the strong force at low energies, but there is ‘asymptotic freedom’ which makes it below 1 at high energies. For EM it is always below 1. I would guess they reference a ‘bare’ value here.
The purpose of these graphs are not how they look in our universe though. Rather a common way of doing anthropic style arguments. Without measuring the value of the constants, from the graph we can know from just knowing there are stable carbon and non-relativistic atoms pretty exactly where the values of the constants must be. Similar arguments can be used to pinpoint the cosmological constant from the existance of galaxies.
are we that good at going from fundamental laws to what actually will happen in the macro world? e.g. we can’t even figure out why certain materials are superconductive at high temperatures.
so i doubt the counterfactual presented in this graph is accurate. we just know if the coupling constant is different the universe will look completely different, but we would have no idea if intelligent life could still arise.