Can the Fine-Structure Constant Help Adjudicate Nuclear Stability?

This paper investigates whether the dimensionless fine-structure constant α can help organize a physicallyintelligible stability test for the proton, free neutron, and bound proton–neutron pair. It adopts the SP3working hypothesis that stable matter might correspond to nested, phase-organized configurations of aphysical space medium. It first applies established mass–energy accounting: a free neutron has an allowedβ-decay channel with Q ≈ 0.7823 MeV, while the deuteron has binding energy B_d ≈ 2.2246 MeV, so theanalogous decay of the bound neutron is energetically forbidden by approximately 1.4422 MeV. Next, αsupplies a natural electromagnetic energy comparator, αℏc/r, at an explicitly chosen nuclear length r. Adimensionless threshold parameter and a hypothetical phase-coupling model are constructed. Crucially,the electromagnetic scale is not identified with the strong nuclear binding force, and the resulting thresholddoes not independently predict the binding energy. The model is offered as a transparent candidatescreening tool and as an invitation to derive a genuinely predictive common-medium mechanism