The laws of physics (apparently) change over time and distance.

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totalnoob

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Jul 17, 2009
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very slow and minor changes, but change nonetheless. This seems to overthrow the idea that the laws of nature are constant everywhere in the universe.

http://www.economist.com/node/16941123?story_id=16941123&fsrc=nlw|hig|09-02-2010|editors_highlights

RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen atoms. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist.

Why alpha takes on the precise value it does, so delicately fine-tuned for life, is a deep scientific mystery. A new piece of astrophysical research may, however, have uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle. In a paper just submitted to Physical Review Letters, a team led by John Webb and Julian King from the University of New South Wales in Australia presents evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be constant after all. Rather, it seems to vary from place to place within the universe. If their results hold up to scrutiny they will have profound implications—for they suggest that the universe stretches far beyond what telescopes can observe, and that the laws of physics vary within it.

(snip)

Dr Webb first conducted such a study almost a decade ago, using 76 quasars observed with the Keck telescope in Hawaii. He found that, the farther out he looked, the smaller alpha seemed to be. In astronomy, of course, looking farther away means looking further back in time. The data therefore indicated that alpha was around 0.0006% smaller 9 billion years ago than it is now. That may sound trivial. But any detectable deviation from zero would mean that the laws of physics were different there (and then) from those that pertain in the neighbourhood of the Earth.

(snip)

If the fine-structure constant really does vary through space, it may provide a way of studying the elusive “higher dimensions” that many theories of reality predict, but which are beyond the reach of particle accelerators on Earth. In these theories, the constants observed in the three-dimensional world are reflections of what happens in higher dimensions. It is natural in these theories for such constants to change their values as the universe expands and evolves.

Awesome. :)
 
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waggy

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Dec 14, 2000
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I remember reading a article that said that the laws would HAVE to change. they couldn't explain everything because the answers they thought were possible broke the laws of physics.
 
Oct 27, 2007
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Really cool stuff. But a couple of things to keep in mind: This is very early research so it's not safe to proclaim it as fact. Additionally, this is not the first time that a theory has been posed that claims changing constants over time.

There have been several theories that posit a varying speed of light over time, and most have been ruled out. Also keep in mind that variations in c are equivalent to varaitions in h (the Planck constant) physically, and that α is a ratio involving h, so a theory with varying α is equivalent to a varying c theory. In other words, these guys are not the first and won't be the last to explore theories with c varying over time or space, and so far none have borne fruit.

Not to say this isn't interesting or exciting (new physics always is), but I remain skeptical until their measurements have been verified and the theory has been further fleshed out and explored.
 
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