Amazing stuff or a provocation or hot air? Definitely food for thought! Before this paper it was down to two fundamental constants. Why not one?
"A group of Brazilian researchers has presented an innovative proposal to resolve a decades-old debate among theoretical physicists: How many fundamental constants are needed to describe the observable universe? Here, the term "fundamental constants" refers to the basic standards needed to measure everything. ...
The group argues that the number of fundamental constants depends on the type of space-time in which the theories are formulated; and that in a relativistic space-time, this number can be reduced to a single constant, which is used to define the standard of time. The study is an original contribution to the controversy sparked in 2002 by a famous article by Michael Duff, Lev Okun and Gabriele Veneziano published in the Journal of High Energy Physics. ...
There are several relativistic space-times that correspond to different solutions of Einstein's equations. The simplest of these is Minkowski space-time, named after the German-born Jewish-Lithuanian mathematician Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909). It is a space-time that is empty (free of particles and everything else), homogeneous (in which all points have the same properties), and isotropic (in which all spatial directions are equivalent). For simplicity, the article in question uses Minkowski space-time. However, the authors point out that their conclusions can be generalized to any relativistic space-time. ...
Let us note that h gives the spin scale of elementary particles while G alone gives no scale at all. The physical quantity responsible for the gravitational attraction between bodies is GM, which has units of 
, being measured, hence, with clocks and rulers. Apparently, this common knowledge faded out in the last 150 years. ...
According to the criteria used by Duff, Okun and Veneziano, the number of fundamental constants is related to the minimum number of independent standards needed to express all physical quantities. To repeat, in Galileo's space-time, all observables can be expressed in terms of units of time and space, which are usually the "second" and the "meter." In relativistic space-time, the unit of time—that is, the "second"—is sufficient to express any observable. ..."
From the abstract:
"We revisit Duff, Okun, and Veneziano’s divergent views on the number of fundamental constants and argue that the issue can be set to rest by having spacetime as the starting point. This procedure disentangles the resolution in what depends on the assumed spacetime (whether relativistic or not) from the theories built over it. By defining that the number of fundamental constants equals the minimal number of independent standards necessary to express all observables, as assumed by Duff, Okun, and Veneziano, it is shown that the same units fixed by the apparatuses used to construct the spacetimes are enough to express all observables of the physical laws defined over them. As a result, the number of fundamental constants equals one in relativistic spacetimes."
"... Thus, let us run history in reverse and recall how the SI [International System of Units] units can be reduced to the MKS [meter, kilogram, second] system. ... After the 2019 revision [of the SI], the kelvin was defined by fixing the exact value of the Boltzmann constant. This also clarifies the role played by the Boltzmann constant as an energy-to-temperature conversion factor:
(9)
Had the scale of thermometers been fixed in units of energy from the start, the Boltzmann constant would have been needless. That said, one can eliminate the kelvin unit by rewriting the physical laws in terms of
rather than temperature T, entropy S,
, respectively; i.e.
should escort the thermodynamic variables to convert their units into MKS. ..."
P.S. "... Minkowski died of appendicitis in Göttingen on 12 January 1909. Max Born delivered the obituary on behalf of the mathematics students at Göttingen. David Hilbert's obituary of Minkowski illustrates the deep friendship between the two mathematicians:
Since my student years, Minkowski was my best, most dependable friend who supported me with all the depth and loyalty that was so characteristic of him. Science, which we loved above all else, brought us together; it seemed to us a garden full of flowers. In it, we enjoyed looking for hidden pathways and discovered many a new perspective that appealed to our sense of beauty, and when one of us showed it to the other and we marveled over it together, our joy was complete. He was for me a rare gift from heaven and I must be grateful to have possessed that gift for so long. Now death has suddenly torn him from our midst. However, what death cannot take away is his noble image in our hearts and the knowledge that his spirit continues to be active in us.
— [David] Hilbert, 1909" Souce
Fig. 1 
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