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New Findings Suggest Laws of Nature 'Downright Weird,' Not as Constant as Previously Thought

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 29 2020, @06:07PM   
from the depends-on-which-way-you-look dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Not only does a universal constant seem annoyingly inconstant at the outer fringes of the cosmos, it occurs in only one direction, which is downright weird.

Those looking forward to a day when science's Grand Unifying Theory of Everything could be worn on a t-shirt may have to wait a little longer as astrophysicists continue to find hints that one of the cosmological constants is not so constant after all.

In a paper published in Science Advances, scientists from UNSW Sydney reported that four new measurements of light emitted from a quasar 13 billion light years away reaffirm past studies that found tiny variations in the fine structure constant.

UNSW Science's Professor John Webb says the fine structure constant is a measure of electromagnetism—one of the four fundamental forces in nature (the others are gravity, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force).

"The fine structure constant is the quantity that physicists use as a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force," Professor Webb says.

"It's a dimensionless number and it involves the speed of light, something called Planck's constant and the electron charge, and it's a ratio of those things. And it's the number that physicists use to measure the strength of the electromagnetic force."

The electromagnetic force keeps electrons whizzing around a nucleus in every atom of the universe—without it, all matter would fly apart. Up until recently, it was believed to be an unchanging force throughout time and space. But over the last two decades, Professor Webb has noticed anomalies in the fine structure constant whereby electromagnetic force measured in one particular direction of the universe seems ever so slightly different.

"We found a hint that that number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe. Not just as a function of time, but actually also in direction in the universe, which is really quite odd if it's correct ... but that's what we found."

[...] If there is a directionality in the universe, Professor Webb argues, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very slightly different in certain regions of the cosmos, the most fundamental concepts underpinning much of modern physics will need revision.

"Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions," he says.

"That standard model itself is built upon Einstein's theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics."

[...] Professor Webb's team believe this is the first step towards a far larger study exploring many directions in the universe, using data coming from new instruments on the world's largest telescopes. New technologies are now emerging to provide higher quality data, and new artificial intelligence analysis methods will help to automate measurements and carry them out more rapidly and with greater precision.

-- submitted from IRC

Journal Reference:
Michael R. Wilczynska, John K. Webb, Matthew Bainbridge, et al. Four direct measurements of the fine-structure constant 13 billion years ago [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay9672)

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Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

• Not the first time Not the first time (Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:48PM (1 child)

  by c0lo (156) on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:48PM (#988308) Journal

  Same guy on the hunt: Is the fine-structure constant actually constant? [wikipedia.org]

  Physicists have pondered whether the fine-structure constant is in fact constant, or whether its value differs by location and over time. A varying α has been proposed as a way of solving problems in cosmology and astrophysics.[20][21][22][23] String theory and other proposals for going beyond the Standard Model of particle physics have led to theoretical interest in whether the accepted physical constants (not just α) actually vary.
  ...
  Improved technology at the dawn of the 21st century made it possible to probe the value of α at much larger distances and to a much greater accuracy. In 1999, a team led by John K. Webb of the University of New South Wales claimed the first detection of a variation in α. Using the Keck telescopes and a data set of 128 quasars at redshifts 0.5 < z < 3, Webb et al. found that their spectra were consistent with a slight increase in α over the last 10–12 billion years.
  ...
  King et al. have used Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to investigate the algorithm used by the UNSW group to determine Δα/α from the quasar spectra, and have found that the algorithm appears to produce correct uncertainties and maximum likelihood estimates for Δα/α for particular models.[38] This suggests that the statistical uncertainties and best estimate for Δα/α stated by Webb et al. and Murphy et al. are robust.

  Lamoreaux and Torgerson analyzed data from the Oklo natural nuclear fission reactor in 2004, and concluded that α has changed in the past 2 billion years by 45 parts per billion. They claimed that this finding was "probably accurate to within 20%". Accuracy is dependent on estimates of impurities and temperature in the natural reactor. These conclusions have to be verified.

  See also Variable speed of light [wikipedia.org]

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

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• Re:Not the first time (Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday April 29 2020, @08:53PM

  by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Wednesday April 29 2020, @08:53PM (#988328) Homepage

  And Sean Carroll on the constant-ness of the constant:
  
  http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2018/09/25/atiyah-and-the-fine-structure-constant/
  """
  But to a modern physicist, this seems like a misguided quest. First, because renormalization theory teaches us that α isn’t really a number at all; it’s a function. In particular, it’s a function of the total amount of momentum involved in the interaction you are considering. Essentially, the strength of electromagnetism is slightly different for processes happening at different energies. Atiyah isn’t even trying to derive a function, just a number.
  """

  --
  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

  Parent