Fifty Years the Queen: A Tribute to Elizabeth II on Her Golden Jubilee

The half-century since Elizabeth II's coronation in 1952 has witnessed many changes, some for good and some for ill. Among these, she has been one of the few constants.

The constants of nature are the fundamental laws of physics that apply throughout the universe. They encode the deepest secrets of the universe, and express at once our greatest knowledge and our greatest ignorance about the cosmos. Their existence has taught us the profound truth that nature abounds with unseen regularities. Yet while we have become skilled at measuring the values of these constants, our frustrating inability to explain or predict their values shows how much we have still to learn about inner workings of the universe.