Fine Structure Constant May Not Be So Constant

BuzzSkyline writes "According to a post at Physics Buzz, 'Just weeks after speeding neutrinos seem to have broken the speed of light, another universal law, the fine structure constant might be about to crumble.' Astronomical observations seem to indicate that the constant, which controls the strength of electromagnetic interactions, is different in distant parts of the universe. Among other things, the paper may explain why the laws of physics in our corner of the universe seem to be finely tuned to support life. The research (abstract) is so controversial that it took over a year to go from submission to publication in Physical Review Letters, rather than the weeks typical of most other papers appearing in the peer-reviewed journal."

Re:Okay

[0123456]

When I was studying physics at school I measured the gravitational acceleration of a pendulum and it was 10% different to the accepted value.

Of course back then my teacher called me a dumb-ass and told me to do it again rather than plastering the news all over the media.

Anthropic principle

[Anonymous Coward]

"may explain why the laws of physics in our corner of the universe seem to be finely tuned to support life"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphic_principle [wikipedia.org]
The universe is not tuned for life. We are tuned for the universe.

I've always wondered about this

[MyLongNickName]

I am not a theoetical physicist, I don't play one on TV and I didn't stay at a Holiday Express last night.

But I've always wondered how we know that the speed of light is the same regardless, that the gravitational constant is constant throughout space and time. Yes, I understand that you have to assume consistency until proven otherwise. Frankly, I am not convinved that the last two "discoveries" will pan out and that we've found non-constant constants. But it confirms to me that this is not a resolved question like so many others have claimed when I have asked the question.

All of it makes me wonder what the mechanism is that determines c or the gravitational constant, the electro weak force and a myriad of other variables that determine the way the universe exists. The only thing that is clear to me is that we understand so freaking little compared to the way the universe must truly be.

Re:Okay

[History's Coming To]

Funny example to use though - there are persistent rumours of anomalous behaviour in pendulums (pendula?) during solar eclipses. I don't know how rigorous the "experiments" in question are, my guess is not very, but an odd example to use. The basic point is right though - if your experiment disagrees with current theory then you should really presume you've done something silly until you've eradicated every error you can think or, then you ask for help...in this case, by publishing.

Re:Breaks a lot of dependancies

[Chris Burke]

Many astronomical/physics models _ASSUME_ that the universe has the same fundamental laws across the entire universe.

Indeed. It's an assumption that's worked very well for us so far, but it is still just an assumption.

Much like it is an assumption that we live in a causal universe; the loss of this sanity-preserving assumption being one of the possible consequences of the FTL neutrinos being real.

Personally, I find it very possible that there will be variations across the universe, based on dependencies we don't know/see/understand.

If those dependencies are the same everywhere, but local conditions cause the apparent behavior to differ, then our base assumption is still correct, it's just we weren't looking at a fundamental enough set of rules.

Just because I see snow everywhere I look in Antarctica doesn't mean I should expect to see snow everywhere I look in Africa.

The rules that cause it to snow in Antarctica are the same as the rules that cause it to not snow in the Sahara. The rules that cause there to be very little precipitation at all in both places are the same as the rules that cause it to rain a lot in the Amazon.

When one says that one shouldn't expect things to be the same in different places, this is trivial when "things" are conditions and thus effects, and a vastly deeper meaning when "things" are the laws that cause different conditions to result in different effects. It isn't obvious that this is a natural extension or expectation.

It still could be the universe we live in, though. I worry that if the laws of physics are truly different in different parts of the universe -- not that what we think of as the laws are the consequence of a deeper set of laws and varying conditions -- that this means it will be basically impossible for us to make sense of the large-scale universe. Much like how a non-causal universe would mean we might never be able to understand the universe outside of the range of conditions where causality appears to hold.

Re:Breaks a lot of dependancies

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't do well with analogies, do you?

Analogies are like fish. Some of them make no sense.

Re:I've always wondered about this

[rgbatduke]

Explanation: a) "Because it works, pretty much, to explain all or nearly all of the observational data, including things like the fact that spectral lines from very distant suns are recognizably correspondent with the lines as measured in a laboratory on Earth. Note that (for example) those lines are predicted, in part, by the fine structure constant, which is why there is rather enormous opposition to the notion that it isn't constant. It is visibly constant almost anywhere we look, or the entire field of spectroscopy would be inconsistent and inexplicable observations would exist in abundance; b) See a). The problem is that there is a lot of data that is perfectly consistent with \alpha being constant. There is a nearly complete lack of data suggesting otherwise. That doesn't mean that it is constant -- \alpha could easily be a quantity that follows from a far more general physics in higher dimensions that isn't homogeneous -- and belief that it is isn't religious belief. It is that one would rather have expected spectroscopy to have egregiously failed long before this if it were not a constant, and it hasn't. Or if it has, this is the first announcement that may or may not prove to be a reliable observation of an exception.

The point is, it is best to believe the things that best fit the data (and satisfy a few other requirements, such as consistency, parsimony, and so on) all the time, but not unreasonably best belief moves around as we obtain more data and discover and resolve inconsistencies. It moves around slowly because we have learned from experience to doubt observations unless/until a certain standard of consistency, parsimony, observational reproducibility, and so on has been reached. New physics is always great fun, skepticism is better than unreasoning belief, but reasoned, evidence-based conditional belief, believing the most in those things one can doubt the least (when one tries to doubt very hard), is a lot better than jumping on and believing every half-assed claim that is made on the basis of possibly flawed methodology and revelling in it just because it proves that "we don't know everything" and that therefore, very smart people aren't as smart as they think they are (closing the gap mentally between yourself, so quick to see the truth of it all, and them, the fools).

Does that pretty much sum up much of the discussion above, so far?

A sound result will prove to be reproducible and even a sound result (as far as the observation is concerned) may have many possible explanations, including (quite possibly) ones that don't mess with the fine structure constant. For example, the precession of the orbit of mercury could be viewed as a violation of the law of gravitation, and in one sense it is, but in a deeper sense it is not -- gravity is all right but it needs to be formulated in a relativistically curved spacetime -- the real error is in assumptions made about space and time itself, not "gravity".

rgb