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Between 1946 and 1949, Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman took quantum electrodynamics — a theory whose computed outputs were infinite — and made it return the most accurate numbers in physics, by a reassignment: the electron's observed mass and charge are declared to be the theory's parameters plus their self-energy corrections, the bare parameters are eliminated into the measured ones, and the corrections' infinite parts are discarded into quantities no experiment reads. I price that identification, and the price is computed against an explicit cutoff so that nothing is hidden inside the word "infinity." The one-loop mass correction grows as δm/m = (3α/2π)ln(Λ/m): 0.008023 at Λ/m = 10, 0.032091 at 10², 0.179535 at the Planck ratio — and it reaches the electron's whole mass, δm/m = 1.000000, only at Λ/m = 10^124.645785, which is to say the discarded correction is order-unity nowhere in the physical range and yet is discarded. The charge correction runs the coupling's inverse from 137.035999 to 126.101452 at the Planck ratio, with its pole 258.074759 orders of magnitude beyond. And the procedure's warrant stands printed: Schwinger's own 1948 sentence computes the anomalous moment "in spite of the fact that our basic theory cannot be a correct one." Counted plainly: 1 identification postulate (m, e physical := bare + self-field dressing), 1 named mechanism in the procedure (reassignment into the measured parameters) against 2 at the same class of address (pole subtraction with universality), 0 derivations in 1946–49 of the identification. Its return is also priced: the reassigned series' first term, a_e = α/2π = 0.001161410, stands within 0.000001758 of the measured value — the most confirmed reassignment in the record. Grade for this census entry, printed at full size: REASON FOUND / STILL TURNING — PREMISE-ONLY, explicitly not a kill and not a falsification. The program headline stands unmoved: vacuum catastrophe NOT SOLVED / PARTIAL, producing-count 0.
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William Alexander Aldred (2026) studied this question.
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