Constants Not Constant?

grytpype writes: "According to this story, a team of astronomers have determined (based on their observations of distant quasars) that [certain physical constants] may have been different in the far past of the universe. The discovery (if validated) is said to be good news for string theorists."

Summary

[tbo]

Here's a quick summary, for those opposed to NYTimes registration (incidentally, feel free to use the login slashdot66, password slashdot):

Astrophysicists have observed spectra from metallic atoms in gas clouds up to 12 billion light years away. Certain patterns in these spectra cannot be explained with current physics, and suggest that the fine structure constant (alpha) had a value slightly different in that place and time. From memory, I believe alpha is a dimensionless number with a value near (but not exactly) 137. The difference between alpha as we know it, and the apparent alpha in these gas clouds is about 0.001%. The observation was made from the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Something like this, if confirmed, would almost certainly win the discoverers a Nobel Prize. Also, such a discovery would apparently also support string theory (although that's outside my area of research).

I'll stop karma whoring now, and return you to your regularly-scheduled uninformed flamefest.

alpha

[Mercuria]

alpha =(e^2)/((h-bar)*c)

where e is the charge on an electron, h-bar (normally a lover case script h with a horizontal line through the stem just above the round part) is Plank's constant divided by 2*pi, and c is the speed of light. the answer is a dimensionless 1/137.036.

It must be a bug in cpp

[graveyhead]

I presume physicists #define their constants the same way I do :-P

Hmm this is big

[rdslater596]

Well this is big, but not in the way most people will think. The constant they speak of, alpha, is the fine structure constant which is very important in fundamental high energy physics and cosomology. Its also important to note that since alpha = electron charge ^2 / (planks constant x speed o light) that any one of the three could be the culprit in changing or it could be some eacky quasar problem since we don't really know what quasars are for sure.

I doubt this affects General Relativity very much because GR is a non-quantum theory, while alpha is a quantum mechancis issue. Of course this may help develop a quantum gravity theory (Special relativity is different and completely unaffected, its main idea is that everything is relative and is unaffected by whatever alpha and c and the electron charge are).

In addition the paper does call for further study, and of course the CURRENT universe in unchanged (sorry still no FTL). However, this is an insight at the very fundamental levels of quantum mechnanics which is very closely tied to cosmology. String theorys and all of that ilk may be able to acount for this but the day to day shmoe will probably not know the difference. Still it is an important result that begs for more study and of course the bloody theory people will be all over this (It doesn't show I'm experiemtal branch does it). What this does boil down to is a insight into the fundamental interactions between the smallest bits of the universe. Of course we probably are going to need quite a few more before we sort out Grand Unified Theory, but this may be one of the big steps along the way.

One last caveat. Alpha also changes with energy, and as one causes more energetic reactions (like those done at fermilab) Alpha will increase. This could be a source for explanation, but I am only speculating. Theres a lot of wild stuff at the top physics levels going on.

Re:of course this affects special relativity.

[rdslater596]

Well I guess it depends on how you say SR is affected. The transformations from one frame of reference to another are unaffected. Now its just that c could possibly be smaller or larger. The fundamentals of the theory remain unchanged, only the numbers you punch in are different. Its on the scale of doing more precise measurements of the speed of light. SR is only affected in that the result you get is slightly changed--the underlying theory is unaffected. Its like calculting gravity force and suddenly we improve the Gravitational constant measurement. Well the numbers we get from the theory are all slightly different, but the underlying theory is unchanged. Special Relativity does not care is the speed of light is 1 m/s or 100 m/s. Its just cares that objects transform according to certain laws.

Cosmic Arguments?

[Alien54]

I can see it all now.

The ArchAngels and ArchDemons in charge of implementing the Universe having arguments over the specs, the editors, the compilers.

Even the constants to use, which get updated from time to time.

[There are plenty of articles out there with this paradigm of God as programmer]

This could be interesting.

[jd]

If only the Greeks had lived far -enough- in the past, they could have squared the circle with ease!

Seriously, I'm a little skeptical. This reminds me far too much of maths teachers trying to convince me that the shortest distance is not a straight line, on a sphere. (It =IS=, from the perspective of the line. It's not the line's fault that stupid teachers can't seperate the observer from the observed.)

Now, some "constants" are composite. The Gravitational Constant, for example, is not a simple value, but the product of a number of values. It's entirely possible that such composite values will vary, under different conditions, even if any given constant within them did not. (eg: Different ratios.)

In other words, those "composite" constants might not be "Constants" in the accepted sense. They might merely be static, under "normal" conditions.

Not So Brief Note: For the purpose of this post, I'm defining "Composite" Constants as those constants which exist, in the underlying model, as a product/sum of two or more component Constants, and which have no existance independent of those component Constants. Since they are defined as expressions, I can accept that such Composite Constants could actually vary.

An Atomic Constant is one which exists in and of itself. The simplest possible description of itself -is- itself. Since these aren't defined in relation to anything else, it would not make sense to me for these to vary with time or environment. There's nothing within them to vary.

Pi, I believe, is an Atomic constant. The mere fact that you can compute Pi to any accuracy, and/or computer any given digit within it, indicates that it's not going to change in a hurry.

The Feigenbaum Number (the ratio between period doublings in a chaotic system that is in an oscilating state) is, IMHO, much more interesting, in that it is not at all clear from the system whether it is composite or atomic. Because it exists in an abstract, mathematical sense, I'm going to guess that it's atomic, in which case I believe it won't vary.

Re:This could be interesting.

[evanbd]

if I have two "atomic" constants, A and B, A*B will never change. ever. An unchanging expression can't change in value without one of the components changing. Pi is different from G, in that it can be derived from pure mathematics -- 2+2 is always 4, no one is saying otherwise. Likewise, the series that sum to Pi aren't changing. But *physical* constants have no mathematical reason that we know of. They have just been measured an awful lot. And everyone basically agrees in their measurements. Things that are constructs of pure math can't change. But things that are constructs of the physical universe can. Like if the underlying small dimensions that the string theorists keep talking about change in size as the universe expands.

Re:This could be interesting.

[evanbd]

Well, I think my knowledge of string theory prevents me from making any comments that were productive. But I think I have enough of a grasp of things to point out some flaws in the original post. So I added what I could to the discussion, and attempted to do it a polite fashion. I even thought I had succeeded. Apparently not. So, I apologize for any offense taken. That was not my intent, and I most certainly did not intend to belittle or personally attack the author.

You are confusing math constants with physic ones.

[efuseekay]

Mathematical constants are "constants" in the sense that it won't change whatever the universe's physics behave. Pi, for example, is always 3.14... in a flat euclidean space (which can be defined and have nothing to do with the real universe which may not be flat, nor is it euclidean).

Physical constants, like Grav Constant (which by the way, is NOT a composite), however, are constants in the sense that they come out of a theory that needs MEASURED parameters to make it work.

The "constant" in the article refers to the fine structure constant, is a quantity that is either a constant or not dependent on which theory you believe. Currently the Standard Model (which is believed to be wrong at some level) thinks it is. If it is varying with time, like the article says it is, then the interesting thing is that it allows to speculate what the real "underlying" theory is actually is (Not the Standard Model).

YOur idea about the "Atomic constant" and "composite constant" are just plain misunderstanding of what a constant really is. There is no such jargon as "atomic constant". We use the word "fundamental constants of a theory", which is theory/physics dependent. The other constants, like Pi, are mathematical and has NOTHING to do with physics, for chrissake!

So the Greeks cannot square the circle, ever.

Re:You are confusing math constants with physic on

[anshil]

Physical constants, like Grav Constant (which by the way, is NOT a composite), however, are constants in the sense that they come out of a theory that needs MEASURED parameters to make it work.

How do you know that the gravitation constant is not a composite? It's there because we don't understand gravitation. Gravitation itself is an unexplained force, and the constant results only from observation. Now how do we know it cannot be composited from rules we don't yet know?

Re:You are confusing math constants with physic on

[jd]

Exactly, although I'd go a little bit further.

If you look at equations which use the Gravitational Constant, you notice something very important. They typically involve the surface of a sphere, of radius 'r', but there's no Pi. The one constant that NEEDS to be there, for the description of the system to be complete, is noticable by its absence.

In short, G - the Gravitational Constant - is provably composite, as it must contain within it the value of Pi, in order to complete the description of the spherical system.

Now, let us say that G = n . Pi, where n is some arbritary multiplier, which is fixed for any given system. In other words, n is a constant, for that system. Change the system, and n varies, which would mean that G varies.

In truth, I believe G to be an extremely complex composite, containing a wide range of "atomic" constants and multipliers. Since gravity does not travel faster than light, there would seem to be some equivalent to elasticity for space, which suggests some parallel of Hooke's Constant. I'm sure, if anyone had a moment to think about it, there would be many other Constants which end up being "missing/unnecessary" when using G in an equation, but which are there, nonetheless. Now, where could they be....

Re:This could be interesting.

[jd]

I'm more than happy to call my maths teachers stupid. In fact, I'll add you to the list. You assume that something exists independently of the body on which it exists. By making that assumption, you create an inconsistant model, which is only "valid" for certain conditions.

IF, on the other hand, when you examine an object, you take into account the observer, you will find that a lot of "special cases" become generalities, and a lot of "generalities" actually become special cases.

A simple example is the mobeus strip. Is it 2D or 3D? Well, that depends. If you're an observer on the mobius strip, then it is 2D. You can define everything in terms of two parameters (a dimension is simply a parameter). However, if you are an observer -outside- of the mobeus strip, it exists in three dimensions, as you cannot define the twist except through an extra parameter.

Another simple example comes from Benoit Mandelbrot's "Fractal Geometry of Nature". Take a ball of string. At an infinite distance, it's a point. Zero dimensions. Move closer. it becomes a circle. Two dimensions. Still closer, it becomes a sphere. Three dimensions. Closer still, it becomes a long line. One dimension. The ball of string hasn't changed. Nor has the observer. But the relationship between the two, by varying, has altered the nature of the observed, as seen by the observer.

Let's move onto lines in 3D space. A photon travels along a defined path, through curved space. To the outside observer, that path is not straight. But so what? It's not the observer who is moving. From the perspective of the photon, there has been no resultant force applied, and therefore no change in direction. From the perspective of the photon, the path it is travelling on **IS** a straight line.

Why is this so important? Simple. You can't understand physical phenomina by standing on the outside. Physics is an experimental science. A hands-on science. It cannot, and will not, make any sense to people who prefer to keep a distance.

Terminology is like a computer macro. It exists to simplify communication. If the "standard" macros have too limited a scope, then by all means define your own. Makes someone "self-important"? Scrooge would have go this one right. Bah! Humbug! You think they guys who talk of "sausage instabilities" in plasmas first searched a Plasma Terminology Encyclopedia? No! They coined their own terms, that described what they saw.

And THAT, my dear Watson, is the difference between a scientist and a wannabe. Scientists don't BOTHER with "Encyclopedias", because what they want to describe is what they are seeing, not what some formal librarian wants them to see.

I "see" "Constants" which (IMHO) are clearly a function containing other constants. I choose to call these "composite", because that describes what I see. One thing that comprises of other things. As this is a term commonly understood in this way, it communicates what I wish to present, which is what language is all about.

I also "see" "Constants" which (IMHO) exist in and of themselves. They are already reduced to the simplest, most basic unit. These, I choose to call "atomic", because "atomic" entities are understood to be the simplest possible unit.

It makes no sense whatsoever to use terminology that nobody understands, as that defeats the purpose of communication. It would be like transmitting DECNET packets to a machine that only understood IPv6. Sure, the packets may be "valid", but the communication will still fail.

Re:This could be interesting.

[jd]

If C = f(A, B), where A and B are constants, and f() is some function, then the most general expansion would be:

C = d(aA + bB + c)^e + f

Where a, b, c, d, e and f are unknowns and may be either constants or variables.

It is my thesis that the Gravitational "Constant" is really something of this form, where a..f may be treated as fixed, within "normal" conditions, but which are actually variables. They just don't vary very much, usually. In short, not entirely unlike the model described by Hooke's Law, which is a linear approximation which is "good enough" for most practical purposes, under most normal conditions.

Reminds me of a short story...

[Masem]

Name and author long forgotten, but the story talked about how scientists had found the gravitation constant and others to be bouncing around (within 0.01% that is) in both directions, with increasing frequency for about a year, and they realized that a 'wavefront' between the old universal constants and the new ones was about to hit the earth. The story specifically focuses on a couple that retreat to an isolated island as rioters and 'end-of-the-universe' fanatics rampaged through citiss right before the wavefront hit. The wavefront does occur, but the world doens't end; the couple emerge from their location with the sky looking slightly redder, feeling a bit lighter, but no worse for wear.

Of course, the other thing this reminds me of is a TNG episode where the temporarily mortal Q is in engineering as the crew try to figure out how to deflect an asteroid landing on a planet, and Q blurts out "Why not just change the gravitational constant of the universe?"

for those that don't have a NYTimes acct..

[TechnoVooDooDaddy]

http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/15/science/15PH YS.html [nytimes.com]

Good news for creationists too

[al_d]

One theory that 'explains' how the universe can be only 6000 odd years old, yet some starlight can have travelled many billions of (current) light-years to reach earth is that the speeed of light is slowing down [don-lindsay-archive.org]...

What does E=mc^2 mean to you?

[roystgnr]

To me, it means:

Energy = mass * (speed of light) squared

This equation tells us how much energy we get from reactions that destroy mass, such as the radioactive decay of elements inside the Earth, or the nuclear fusion inside the Sun.

Now, if you want light in the past to travel, say, 6 billion (current) light years in the space of 6000 years, you need to speed it up one million times. In other words, you increase the amount of energy released by nuclear reactions by one trillion.

I'm not an astrophysicist, and the question "what would happen to the Sun if fusion released a trillion times as much energy" is a complicated one, but even if it didn't go nova I'd be surprised if Earth was still at a comfortable temperature.

I'm not a geophysicist either, but the question "what would happen to the Earth if radioactive elements released a trillion times as much energy" is a relatively (excuse the pun) easy one. Estimating the heat production of the Earth's core in this fashion at 4 * 10^13 [umich.edu] watts, we can calculate the heat production of the early creationist Earth to be approximately 4 * 10^25 watts.

For comparison's sake, the Earth currently receives (1353 W/m^2) * pi * (6,360,000 m)^2 = approximately 1.7 * 10^17 watts from the Sun. So really, even if there was no Sun shining on Adam and Eve, they would still be getting about 230 times as much energy as we do today, raising the equilibrium temperature of the planet to a nice toasty 750 degrees Celsius. Maybe that explains Noah's flood, huh? All that water to cover the planet must have been in water vapor form before we cooled to under boiling temperatures.

Of course, if you want to explain just how *much* of those radioactive elements have decayed away in the multi-billion year old rocks we find lying around, you have to increase the rate of reaction (m, in the above equation) by another million fold. That brings our equilibrium temperature to about 5600 degrees Celsius... but wait, at that temperature all the rock is molten and radioactive decay products wouldn't get trapped next to their generating elements anyway.

I love creationist theories. My personal favorite are the wacky explanations of where all the water for Noah's flood came from ("vapor canopy"? anyone want to calculate the air pressure under something like that!?) and where it went.

For future reference, if you really think that Genesis is literal truth and God behaves like a parlor magician, then answers like "He created starlight already on it's way to Earth" and "he made ten million cubic miles of water teleport to deep space", however implausible sounding, are irrefutable. Once you try to explain miracles in terms of science, you're going to have to deal with its conclusions.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[ryants]

Heh. Hardly.

This article is talking about changes in something related to, but not exactly the same as, the speed of light.

Also the changes are much more minute than creationists claim.

But, given the history of creationist lies, it won't be long until we see this result being quoted out of context and being used to support completely unjustified conclusions.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[Christianfreak]

given the history of creationist lies

Before I go on let me say that I'm not a creationist and I don't really care how the universe was formed. (It was and I'm here and okay with that). I just have one question: How can you claim someone is lying when we are discussing theories? Being raised in a religious environment I must say that yes some creationist's are quacks, but some of them have done good research and have good evidence to support what they believe. On the flip side some evolutionists are quacks but some also have good theories. Just because at theory is main stream doesn't mean that it has to be true (like the theory that M$ products are great... we all know about that one :)). And religion aside, if someone did prove that someone or something created the universe wouldn't that be just as important scientifically to definitive proof that there was a Big Bang[tm] or that evolution occurs? I certainly hope there is otherwise we have some pretty biased scientists running around out there.

Basically though, please back-up your claims before running around calling people liars, thanks.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[ryants]

Basically though, please back-up your claims before running around calling people liars, thanks

Easy.

• http://talkorigins.org/faqs/gish-exposed.html
• http://talkorigins.org/faqs/cre-error.html
• http://talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html
• http://talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html
• http://talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-whoppers.html
• ...

And so forth.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[blang]

I certainly hope there is otherwise we have some pretty biased scientists running around out there.

It is not about bias. Scientists follow whichever route seems productive. Most scientists do not live under the misconception that the Bible is a text book in science, so they turn to more likely sources for their research. If the scientific society was biased, the creationists would have been burnt on the stake or put in jail for peddling crackpot science. Something that would have been a nice poetic justice, after the hundreds of years the church did the same with people doing real science

Just because there are some crackpot scientists out there doesn't mean we have a duty to believe them, or even listen to what they have to say. Let them go to church with their faith, belief, and mysticism, and leave science to the real scientists.

Theory, experiment and error

[Caid Raspa]

How can you claim someone is lying when we are discussing theories?

By definition: a scientific theory makes predictions that are based on some assuptions. It can be proven false by measuring the effect it predicts and finding discrepancies between observations and theory. So, a scientific theory can be falsified, for example the Newtonian Gravitation Theory was known to be wrong as it did not predict the orbit of Mercury absolutely correctly. General relativity could explain the difference, and thus was considered to be closer to the truth. However, both do a good job in e.g. predicting the orbit of the Moon.

Religious theories in general do not provide predictions or arguments that could be verified or falsified. (Of course there are 'world-will-end-next-sunday' predictions, but who takes them seriously). How could you verify claims such as: 'If you kill someone, you'll go to hell after you die' or 'Jesus is the Son of God'

Creationists are people who believe strongly that Bible is the absolute truth of God, by God and for His People. Some scientific theories have made predictions that are based on assumptions which contradict the Bible, and are thus being seen as an attack against the God. The creationists are now making what they think is science by producing their own theories that also explain all the observed facts, including the Bible, which they think is the absolute truth. However, they do not make their own predictions on results of measurements, they just explain the existing ones.

One characteristic of scientific measurements is that they always contain statistical uncertainties, often referred to as 'error' or 'accuracy'. However, I have never met a creationist who would give a value on the accuracy of the facts extracted from the Bible.

For a creationist, the Bible is the word of absolute truth, meaning that it should be absolutely correct. If it is not, it contains some inaccuracy, and thus their God, who has dictated it word by word, is imperfect. It seems that creationists do no longer believe that Bible is a sufficient base for their life, as science has shown that some claims of the Bible are not completely correct.

They produce artificial 'scientific' extensions to the biblical base of their life. In my opinion, this means that the creationists are trying to explain and extend the absolute truth (or what they think is the absolute truth) with relative truths, that are changing and falsifiable. I'm not that familiar with christianity, but for a muslim, this would mean 'Shirk', or mixing Allah with something else. Shirk is always punished by eternal damnation, and in an islamic society, it is punished also by death. I think creationists are dangerously close to that.

The Buddhists (including myself) have a nice workaround for the conflict between science and religion, but that is another story. If you are interested in that, use google.

Re:Theory, experiment and error

[johnnyb]

Hmmm..., it's nice how you mix all of the people you don't like, and give them a label. Creationism has little to do with whether or not the Bible is true - it has to do with when the earth came about, and how it happened, and how life came about. There are also many groups within creationism which you seem to have glossed over. Yes, most creationists are trying to defend the Bible's accuracy, however, most creationists do not use the Bible as their proof, they use evidence. The fact that some don't doesn't mean that everyone doesn't. Creationists, though, as a rule, operate using the same scientific principles as everyone else.

Religious theory, scientific theory, & Buddhism

[jombee]

AC, to answer your inquiry: Buddhists accept perception and inference as the most important & reliable means of knowledge. Contrary to this, creationists typically accept verbal testimony and/or scriptual authority as the most important & reliable means of knowledge. Thusly, Buddhists will not inherently have difficulty with scientific theory/inquiry whereas a creationist would. Note that Buddhists typically are not concerned with the focus & direction which science typically pursues as it has little to do with the nature of suffering. =jombee

Re:Good news for creationists too

[junkgrep]

---How can you claim someone is lying when we are discussing theories? ---

When people use and reuse logical fallacy, even after its been pointed out them, I think it's fair to call that "lying," or at least "dishonesty" (making an argument that is logically falacious is almost by definition dishonest: as per Lincoln's famous maxim that "he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.")

When Behe claims, for instance, that no papers have ever been published on the evolution of flagellum, he's lying. When creationists claim that complexity inherently demonstrates design, they're lying. When creationists claim that no transitional fossils exist, they're lying. It's that simple. I hear the same fallacious arguments over and over: often because even after being conclusively and publically debunked, creationists continue to try and use the same faulty arguments to convince others, who then go on to parrot these same claims to me.

And the bottom line is that creationists, even well-read ones, are not doing science. They are not publishing theories about how creation happened based on empirical evidence. If creationism were to become a science, it would be the first modern science to exist without any testable theories or any articles published for peer review. In fact, still to this day what the majority of "creationists" do is not even elaborate the workings of their supposed alternate theory of creationism (because all they have is "poof" and "the creator is beyond understanding), but attack evolution in the mistaken (and again, logicaly fallacious by false dilemna) belief that if evolution is discredited, then a creator making creation is the default state (itself, apparently, requiring no proof or elaboration!).
Now, attacking evolution, or any theory, is a healthy thing. But by and large, few creationists have advanced any helpful or even meaningful criticisms of evolutionary theory: largely because they can rarely even muster an non-staw man description of what the theory actually says.

Re:Then let's see some evidence for creationism

[greenrd]

Of course there are. God saw it.

;)

Re:Good news for creationists too

[sconeu]

Occam's Razor. Entities shall not be multiplied without reason.

The Earth really is billions of years old,

or

The Earth is a few thousand years old, and some supernatural being laid down the fossil record, and created radioactive isotopes in the right proportions just to fool us.

Which one requires the additional entities?

Re:Good news for creationists too

[sconeu]

No, I'm referring to U238 and Thorium (isotope number escapes me) decay.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[camusflage]

do you really think, though, that an omnipotent God couldn't create this physical evidence that has you totally snowed?

And this is where Occam's razor comes in handy for us.. Let's see, in this corner, we have a god creating a geologic and cosmologic history that points to the earth being millions and the universe being billions of years old, and in this corner, we have a world created last weekend by god, complete down to the last minutae (except the missing link) to give the utterly convincing impression that it's millions of years old.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[Moofie]

I didn't say that God did not create the universe. (I happen to believe that He did.) I did say that trying to prove the historicity of the Bible using the scientific method is to pervert the purpose of both.

As Galileo very wisely spoke, "The Bible is not a book about how the heavens go, it is a book about how to go to Heaven."

Re:Good news for creationists too

[sconeu]

How did "matter appear out of nowhere"?

Simple, our universe is derived from a quantum uncertainty fluctuation. Remember,

delta E * delta t h

Given that the net energy of the universe is damn close to zero (gravitational energy is negative), the delta t for the quantum fluctuation that is the universe could be VERRRRRRY long.

Pascual Jordan proposed this to Einstein.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[Moofie]

Much more fun to vet every decision you make against a mistranslated book written 1500 years ago.

I can do experiments to verify accuracy and reproducibility of scientific theorems. I can not do experiments to verify the historicity and accuracy of the Bible. These are two separate (and I believe, complementary) schools of thought. Trying to use the Bible to do science, or trying to use Science to talk about the Bible, is like dancing about architecture. It doesn't compute.

I belive that God gave me the capacity to reason so that I could use it to attempt to unravel the secrets of the universe, and use those secrets to better the lives of the people around me. If you think that the pursuit of science and technology has not done that, well, you're welcome to your third-century society. Science and technology have done a hell of a lot more good in the world than dogmatic religions ever have. I'd even go so far as to say that less evil has been done with technology (positing that detonating atomic bombs on people and the like are evil...that's another discussion) than has been done in the name of God. The Crusades and the Inquisition were awfully nasty periods of history, and that's just us Christians.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[Moofie]

Life is not a destination. It's a journey. Just because the place I go is "death", doesn't mean that the journey is meaningless. If I were to die tonight, the people around me would know that it's a different world without my presence. The value of my life is not in what may (or may not) happen after it is over...the value of my life is what I do with it while I have it.

Re:Good news for creationists too

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you meant this as a joke, but creationists don?t think the universe is only 6,000 years old ..

Many of them most certainly do [icr.org].

There were five creation periods before man?s arrival. In the Old Testament, these are referred to as days, but they were periods of undetermined length (some suggest these periods were about 1,000 years each).

Where does that number come from?

Assuming the 1,000 year theory, that would make the Earth at least 11,000 years old.

How is an 11,000 year-old Earth any less ludicrous than a 6,000 year-old Earth, from a scientific standpoint? The scientifically-accepted age of the Earth is around 4.5 billion years; you're talking about a difference of five thousand.

I find this humorous since the other theories of man and Earth?s origin, such as the Big Bang Theory, Darwinism, etc., require an equal dose of blind faith and inconsistent and impractical arguments and ideas.

There's an awful lot of hard evidence in favor of the Big Bang theory, most notably the expansion of the Universe (as witnessed by the recession of galaxies through redshift measurements) and the cosmic microwave background radiation. Interestingly enough, the CMBR wasn't discovered until well after the Big Bang was posited, though the BB certainly predicts its existence (the energy would be so far redshifted that it would have gone through the infrared and into the microwave portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.) To put the Big Bang theory on the same level as "YHWH just sort of poofed everything into place at some point in the recent past" is wishful thinking, IMHO.

The same thing goes for evolutionary common descent. You are certainly allowed to posit the idea that virtually all of the biological, botanical, archeological, and geological community are involved in a conspiracy of blind faith, inconsistency, and impracticality. However, that idea is your cross to bear .. not mine.

Varying with... size of universe?

[Trinition]

I thought I had heard once that there was a theory that constants changes with the epxansion of the universe. There may have been a catch, though, that since we were of the universe, we couldn't detect it. Or maybe it was that different constants changed at different rates with the expansion. Anyone have more ifoon this?

This was published in the 1960s and in the 70s

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientific American published a paper in the 1960s about how G was decreasing. It was written by Tom Van Flandern, who used observations he made at the US naval Laboratory of the occoltation of stars by the moon, and found (over a 15 year period) a small trend that was either a systemic error in the telescope macinery or eveidence that G was decreasing.

His work was ridiculed because fossil evidence shows no eveidence for his decrease.

In the 1970s Michael Macarthur published in a New Zealand Amateur Astronomical journal a paper in which he demonstrated that if the decrease in G obeyed a hyberbolic law then at the time the fossils were being laid down the decrese in G would be so slow as to be unobservable by that method.

I've seen some of Macarthur's later work, in which he comes to the same conclusions as Dirac does. In particular, he arrives at conclusions Hawking and Penrose arrive at, and has shown a physical basis for the Principle of Equivalence.

His major problem in getting his latest work published is actually Van Flandern, who seems to have lost the plot after being so soundly trashed - he is now a Flying Saucer Conspiracy Theorist. Any work that uses his (very early) observations gets shouted down so fast.

Creationists Jumping for Joy

[jheinen]

Great. Just what we need. Now the creationist whackos are going to hold this up as 'evidence' for a young universe. If the laws of physics can change over time, then this could be used to dubiously explain away the age of the universe inferred from the time it takes light to travel from distant objects. Maybe the speed of light was much faster before, and therefore the light got here sooner, meaning we can see objects 12 billion light years away, but in reality maybe it took a shorter time for the light to reach us.

Of course there are numerous holes in such an argument, but that never stood in the way of religious righteousness before.

Re:Creationists Jumping for Joy

[johnnyb]

I like how you think that other people are the only ones whose arguments have holes.

A few questions:

Why have no fossils been found which show evolution between families?

Aren't most changes within a family better explained by shifts in a gene pool and nutritional differences than mutation? (Note for others - creationists have no problem with microevolution - shift of a gene pool within a population - they only have a problem with the addition of new genes to a gene pool)

How do you explain evolution of complex parts of the body for which intermediate forms would have been a hindrance rather than a help?

How do dormant genes fit within the theory of evolution?

Constants changing? ...

[the_ph0x`]

Great now StarFleet is gunna have to adjust all of their speedometers...*sigh*

.ph0x

But...

[kirkb]

What about 42?

the paper

[bcrowell]

The paper is here [lanl.gov].

navigation nightmare

[beanerspace]

Good thing "warp speed" or "light speed" only happens in the movies and on TV. Could you imagine the peril of traveling in space at hyper space speeds using navigational constants that aren't ? OUCH !

Nothing like having a wide-variety of standards.

Constants Aren't So Constant!

[BigBlockMopar]

that [certain physical constants] may have been different in the far past

Here's proof that constants aren't really constant:

• George Burns is dead.
• They cancelled Happy Days.
• The 3.5" diskette is dying.
• Television might soon have more than 525 scanning lines.
• My modem speed doesn't double every year anymore.
• Manual transmissions are getting hard to find in new cars.
• The Camaro is probably going to be discontinued next year.
• Some computer geeks are having a hard time finding work. [sigh]

I'm all for having write access to constants if it means that we can change the speed of light, though.

Re:Constants Aren't So Constant!

[aardvarkjoe]

GOD [tapping watch]: You know, I was expecting visitors eons ago. Wonder what's holding them up?

[ls -l /etc/]

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 766 Jul 31 14:16 /etc/c

GOD: Oops.

[chmod 666 /etc/c]

Re:Constants Aren't So Constant!

[isomeme]

chmod 666 /etc/c

...which conveniently explains the prominence of "666" in the Christian account of how the world ends. Give us write access to c and we'll accidentally set it to zero or something in no time flat. Well, actually the amount of time depends on what we set c to...and how far away the keyboard is...now my head hurts.

Re:Sorry about manual transmition

[BigBlockMopar]

Here in Brazil the default is Manual Transmitons, and it's getting hard to find new cars without it. Probably cultural, but most people here preffer manual transmission, most people preffer to have control over the machine.

So do I. An automatic transmission is good for towing (fluid coupling prevents clutch burnouts) and drag racing (adjust the transmission's shift points to just below your redline for consistency, and it shifts faster than any human can).

A manual transmission, with a skilled driver, is good for gas mileage, power, circle-track or ralley racing, getting unstuck when you're in three-foot-deep snow, preventing wanna-bes from stealing your car (most drivers in North America no longer know how to drive stickshifts), and keeping you awake when you're tired...

My favorite manual transmission is the Chrysler A-833 4-speed synchromesh box from the 1960s. One of those with an overdrive ratio fourth gear is great for cruising along at 65MPH with your big V8 idling. And my favorite automatic transmission is the equally bullet-proof Chrysler TorqueFlite 727 three-speed automatic, though it lacks overdrive.

Ahh... if only Chrysler still made transmissions like those. They were built to survive behind the legendary Chrysler 426 Hemi V8 at the height of the musclecar era.

You can't get a new Chrysler Neon with a manual transmission, and Chrysler's recent automatic transmissions have been relatively unreliable. Not to mention that the Neon lacks an overdrive gear.

It makes me so sad. So very sad.

Re:Sorry about manual transmition

[BigBlockMopar]

There are still some folks out there who like manual trannies.. :)

I know your pain.

Here's a news article from Yahoo about the decline of the stickshift. [yahoo.com] Somewhere else (but I can't find it at the moment) I saw a survey which showed that the majority of North American drivers do not know how to drive a stickshift. And, anecdotally, I had to drive my truck onto the hoist at a tire shop, because the guy who was installing my new tires didn't know how to drive it. He attempted, but the smell of burning clutch was more than I could take. In his defense, I've never had someone clean my rims so well - I never have to top up the air in the tires, and he did a great job on the balancing, too.

One wonders...

[daeley]

Does this mean the constant requests for my personal information (a la the NYT article linked to in the story) may have been at a different frequency in the past?

The speed of light and time

[Pedrito]

The speed of light has changed over time? No kidding? I mean, after a few drinks, it takes several seconds for the light from my monitor to reach my eyes. I think that the constants change more with alcohol and drugs, than with time.

To give a really obvious example, smoke some pot, and hey, time slows down, sometimes it speeds up. I think the physicists need to stop looking at the stars and more at things like pot, LSD, etc. Things that really affect time, and therefore the speed of light 'constant' ;-)

Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep

[Nova Express]

In Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, the universal anthrapamorphic principle is thrown out the window, as it postulates that the universal constants in other parts of the galaxy aren't the same as they are around here. In fact, outside "the slow zone" (where we currently reside) it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light...

Let's get some perspective here

[frankie]

This is (quite literally) not the end of the world, and also not relevant to the evolution debate (although it will surely be blown out of proportion a billion-fold by shoddy journalists). Some info for the crowd:

The fine structure constant [writword.com] (alpha) is found by combining several other "universal constants" in such a way that all of the units (such as meters per second) cancel out. You get a dimensionless number, like pi, whose particular value (about 137) is basically built in to the universe. One formula is:

• alpha = (q_e)^2 / (E_0 * h * c)
  where
• q_e = charge of an electron
• E_0 = permittivity of space [xrefer.com]
• h = Planck's constant [writword.com]
• c = speed of light

So if alpha is actually not constant, any one of those items may have changed while others remained constant. And more importantly, the research points to a change of only 0.001% over the past 12 billion years. In short, warp drive this ain't.

Re:Let's get some perspective here

[Leto2]

If alpha is actually not constant, any one of those items you listed can still be constant, if we change "h". After all, "h" is just an invested scaling factor so that alpha, q, E and c match up.

Re:Let's get some perspective here

[PhilHibbs]

It's 1/137, or about 0.007297351

I've been saying this all along...

[angst7]

Way back when I was a kid it seemed like an eternity of time existed between my birthday in June and Christmas in December. Nowadays all I seem to be saying to myself is "Seems like I *just went* to the bathroom"

flaky time constants..

You didn't know this?

[scott1853]

2 != 2. It really equals 1.999987834637462

Re:You didn't know this?

[jandrese]

Well, 1 is considered equivlent to 2 for very large values of 1.

I *might* be completely wrong, but . . .

[AntiFreeze]

Hasn't this already been stated?

Disclaimer: I feel like I may be way off base here, but I'll go out on a limb anyway. If I'm wrong, please correct me, don't flame me. Also, I'm generalizing a bunch of stuff here, if you're a physist (or a cynic), read this with a grain of salt.

Current theoretical physicists (and some hefty dead ones too) believe(d) that at the time of the big bang, and for a relative time afterwards, there was a single super-force.

Constants, as we know them, are directly related to more particular forces (i.e. Nuclear/Weak/Electromagnetic/Gravitational). For instance, take the gravitational constant G. This constant only makes sense when looking at the gravitational force as it stands now. When the forces are unified, there are different physical behaviors, and hence, even though G *should* be a constant, it is outside its frame of reference.

Think of it this way: when you move at a velocity close to the speed of light, your rulers change size and your clocks tick at a different rate. This is general relativity [I'm dyslexic, what's the chance it's special relativity?]. Go back far enough in time, to when there is a single super-force along with massive amount of dense matter and heat: your tools have changed now too. How can you measure a "constant" when your instruments are changing?

That example is a little weak, so I'll try another one as well. When you look into a glass of water, objects inside will seem different than when you remove them. This is due to different densities in the three mediums you view the object through (water -> glass -> air). Say all pennies are constant. Why is the penny in the glass a different size? Quick answer: it isn't.

But, if you don't know the glass is there, or don't know the correct densities, etc., you have no way of answerring this question other than by saying "the constant isn't so constant." The number of layers (and relative densities) of glass and the other mediums is also important. If each "separation" of the fundamental force to sub-forces (and subsequent breakdowns) are thought of as layers of glass, or the dark to light age transition is thought of as a layer of glass, then the analogy becomes clear. How can you compare one set of measurements with one set of related constants to another set with its own properties, but without knowing the relationships between the two? I say you cannot.

So, doesn't current theoretical physics imply that "constants" specifically cannot remain constant as the laws and makeup of physics changes? Seems that way to me.

Old Bug Strikes New Physics

[crisco]

August 20, 2001

A groundbreaking paper to be published next week in the field's most prestigious journal was withdrawn today after the results were found to be spurious results of a computer bug.

The research, which showed that some of the fundamental constants of the universe may be changing as they aged, had been computed on a supercomputer known as a Beowulf Cluster. Some of the components of that cluster used the Intel Pentium processor which was affected by a well known bug which performed certain mathematical calculations incorrectly.

The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia had assembled the supercomputer over several years using cast off computers and special software originally developed at NASA. The calculations were run over several months to process the huge amount of data the scientists accumulated from the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii.

Team leader Dr. Webb said, "This finding is devastating to myself and my team members, as we worked very hard to eliminate every source of error in our observations".

Dr. Rocky Kolb, an astrophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who was not involved in the work, is worried about other projects using this and similar supercomputer clusters, "This means that a great many other 'findings' are going to have to be reviewed. This sets the physics field back several years but renews hope in areas such as cold fusion".

An Intel spokesman declined to comment.

Reevaluation of constants..

[CDanek]

Maybe those Alabama folk weren't so far of with the proposed legislation changing pi to 3.0.

Evolving value of Pi

[dpilot]

So perhaps right after the big bang, when the universe was smaller, Pi might have been tart. After enough time, in an apparently open universe, Pi will evolve into pizza, or perhaps beyond. But to think more 3-dimensionally, perhaps Pi is really cake, or perhaps orange, or beach ball.

On a different digression, last week there was a discussion about Pi violating the DMCA by containing bit combinations somewhere deep in the bits that express circumvented copyrighted art. If Pi is indeed changing, perhaps that's why TV, movies, and music just seem to be getting worse as the years go by. (Can't have anything to do with MY aging and turning into an old phart!) Wonder what the same changing Pi theory says about Microsoft products or other software contained deep in the bits.

Re:Evolving value of Pi

[feed_me_cereal]

Pi is a really nasty law offender actually. Within the digits of Pi are an infinite number of unliscensed copies of windows 98, and a multitude of kitty porn. In fact, pi is so devious, that it has a naked picture of every child in every sexual position compressed not only into JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP, but also compression formats we wont invent for another year or two! Pi is also the worst violater of privacy in known history. It has movies of you in the shower, sleeping, and making out with all your past signifigant others. Pi has your address, phone number, social scurity number, and list of personal turn-on's all nicely formated in every concievable document format. Pi even has a DivX compressed AVI file of Bill Gates having intercouse with satan. The funniest thing about all of this is, its ABSOLUTELY true!!

Re:Evolving value of Pi

[eXtro]

It's not necesarily true, an infinitely long irrational number does not necessarily include every other possible number sequence. Go here [swarthmore.edu] for more info.

Kitty porn

[dpilot]

Haven't you noticed the way cats like to sprawl out and show it all when it's hot?

But then again, I don't bother photographing it. It's just that cats have a way of finding the warmest spot in the winter, and the coolest in the summer. Think of them as comfort canaries.

Re:Reevaluation of constants..

[AUSketch]

Will this myth [snopes2.com] never end?

Re:Reevaluation of constants..

[MindStalker]

Actually if you understand that the hebrew language is mathematical, you get a much better value of PI from the bible. I used to have the explanation memorized (I love arguing random crap like that), but I don't anymore, but basically each letter/word of the alphabit of the hebrew language has a mathematical meaning and the word "line" is used twice in the setence, but a different word is used the second time. If you take the (second word/first word)*3 you get 3.14156 or something like that, which is even closer than the egyptians reportably knew of pi.
(figured I'd do a google search for this before I submitted this, came up with this)
http://www.yfiles.com/pi.html

Re:Reevaluation of constants..

[MindStalker]

Yes, but its not the religious text that has the pattern, its the language itself. Basically the second word for line is better translated as circumference. So the hebrew word for circumference has a value of 111. The word for line is 106 (111/106)*3=3.14156. Multiply that by 3 and you get 3.141509 (yes that is different than the number I gave earlier, like I said, I was doing that from memory, quoting this from actually rereading the info.) And I was wrong Egpytian did come before Hebrew :(
Anyways the Hebrew language is full of math, so this isn't something unusual or devine really. Watch the movie PI it gives some great examples, for instance the mathematical values for mother+father=child. And many other example that I can't remember.

Re:Reevaluation of constants..

[kinko]

From FORTRAN manual for Xerox computers:

The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.

Re:Reevaluation of constants..

[Johnny Starrock]

Not true. It did, however, come close to happening [cs.ruu.nl]..

Re:Reevaluation of constants..

[LinuxParanoid]

(Your link didn't work.) Nah, that's an old red herring. The adjacent biblical verses say that the vessel was a handsbreath in thickness, so if you measure from the inside you get pretty close to 3.14 depending on your assumptions about cubits, etc. See this mostly secular analysis [straightdope.com] or this more religiously-oriented site's explanation. [answersingenesis.org]

Published version of paper

[apsmith]

The paper was published online last week at the official Physical Review Letters [aps.org] web site, though you need a real subscription (most universities have one) to get in.

Constants not constant

[Tattva]

More and more I think that theories in physics are nothing more than successive approximations and we'll never know the true nature of existence. With some of these theories it almost feels like someone is playing a trick on us and every time we see through it a new layer of tricks is added.

To be succint...

[2nd Post!]

You've just described science and knowledge, my friend.

Everything is a crutch until we get a better description, ad infintum. From Aristotle to Galileo, to Kepler, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, to Feynman, Hawking, and Thorne. Each generation of scientists and mathematicians uses the truths of the previous generation, breaks it, and refashions it according to modern experiences.

It's the *strength* of science, not a weakness.

Re:Constants not constant

[SpaceLifeForm]

Indeed. And even if we did happen to stumble across "the true nature of existence",
how could we possibly know that we had, and that there wasn't some even better
description lurking just beyond our reach?

My theory is that we can never know the true nature of the universe
because we are part of it.
We can never be a true neutral observer.

Re:Constants not constant

[sconeu]

The series

1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ...

will never quite converge in our lifetimes but I don't think we need to see infinity to get a pretty good idea of where it's heading

N = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ...

2N = 2 + 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + ...

or

2N = 2 + N => N = 2

Simple proof of convergence.

Re:I wouldn't be too impatient

[AME]

Modern monotheistic religions, purporting to have all of life's answers, have only been around for 5,000 years or so.

Most modern monotheistic religions don't purport to have all of life's answers, but only the most important ones.

laboratory check; statistics; so what?

[bcrowell]

The change they claim to have detected, based on astronomical measurements, is about 1 part in 10**15 per year. At the end of their paper [lanl.gov], they compare with various other methods, and say that the upper limit from laboratory measurements, carried out over a time period of a few months, is 1 part in 10**14 per year. Presumably the lab experiments can be improved with enough funding and motivation --- either the technique can be improved, or they can just take data for years instead of months, or both. I don't really trust the purely astronomical method, although it's true that the resolution of the solar neutrino problem did turn out to involve new physics, not misunderstood astronomy.

You also have to realize they're only claiming a four-sigma result. Four sigma is very convincing if it's really four sigma, but experimentalists never really truly know their error bars that well --- four sigma could really be two sigma, which could be wrong.

And anyway, say they're right. So what? It would be interesting, but I don't think it revolutionizes physics. The link to string theory suggested in the NY Times article is kinda silly, since string theory would only have produced significant effects at times a zillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Also, it's not news that the fine structure constant isn't constant. In quantum field theory, coupling constants are not absolute constants; they have different values on different distance scales. So yes, it's surprising if atomic spectra have changed, but it doesn't bring all of physics to its knees.

Re:laboratory check; statistics; so what?

[markmoss]

About the "4 sigma" claim. They're looking at a change of 1 in 100,000 over 12 billion years. There are very few things that can be measured that accurately, and the very feeble light they're collecting from a 12 billion year old quasar isn't one of them. That is, the noise must greatly exceed the signal. But by doing a whole lot of measurements and a little elementary statistics, you can figure the probability that the shift in the mean just happened by chance; if I remember right, 4 sigma = about 0.25%.

So it isn't just random noise affecting the measurements. But this says nothing about the chances that any one of a hundred things could have biased their measurements. Assuming they don't want to have all the other scientists laughing at them, they did their utmost to account for all such factors, but they have no way at all to estimate the probability that there's something else out there they didn't take into account...

Does it work in programming?

[SilentChris]

I had a professor in college last year (thank god I graduated) who always preached "Use constants! Use constants when you know the value is not going to change!" even though, really, for most of the little projects we were doing variables would do. I'd love to see his expression if this carried to programming:

"Make that 'const int'. It's always going to be a four."

"But what if it becomes a three?"

"It's a const, it won't become a three."

"But according to the physical restraints of the universe, it just might..." :)

I always liked bringing up "But what if a few bits change on the computer due to static electricity? It ain't const then." :)

Re:Does it work in programming?

[CMiYC]

I once read in a C programming book something along the lines of, "always use CONST for a value of something you will use throughout the program. That way if you need to change this value, you only have to change it once. An example would be making 3.14 a constant named PI. That way if PI ever changes, you only need to change one line of code."

Re:Does it work in programming?

[CMiYC]

Thank you but I read the book back in the 80s. Long before slashdot.

Relevance?

[Havokmon]

"The implication, if it is true, would just be so enormous that it's something people should look at and take seriously," Dr. Kolb said. "This would upset the apple cart."

Now I know what non-computer people think when they hear us ranting about how MS's oppressive tactics are keeping the world from experiencing the best software available:
"Whatever buddy, in YOUR world maybe.."

Bending space/time

[Pedrito]

I just built a gadget that bends space time. I can go anywhere, anytime. The problem is, this professor at MIT has come really close to doing the same thing and he patented his work. I'm worried that he'll sue me under the DMCA if I publish my work. What should I do?

The actual paper, and commentary

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual paper [aps.org]. Also, here is an article from sci.physics.research [google.com]. It urges taking this with a grain of salt, because although the experimenters are careful, there are other more sensitive experiments that haven't detected this effect.

Re:Evolution vs. Creation debate

[alexjohns]

Let's see. It's changed by 1 part in 100,000 over the last 12 billion years. So, we're dating fossil remains from about 100 million years ago. Assuming the same error, we'd be off by (hmm... carry the five, move the three, divide by pi, ignore the remainder, add 1 for good measure, and we get) about 1000 years. Gosh, yes, we 'evolutionists' are worried.

Re:Evolution vs. Creation debate

[ryants]

So, this is good news for string theorists, bad news for evolutionists

Huh? What does biology have to do with anything here? You're comparing apples and oranges.

After all, if you can't count on the 'constants' being the exact same value in the past, how can you actually date the age of the earth, fossils, the universe, etc. accurately?

IF the findings are true (remember, these are very preliminary findings), THEN it takes something like 12 billion years for very very very minute changes to occur. I think dating fossils that are less than 4 billion years old is not going to be affected much, if at all. And these results really don't have any significant implications for the age of the universe.

Re:Evolution vs. Creation debate

[tbo]

I'm not sure what you mean by "observational science". All science is observational, in the science that observation and experiment is the ultimate test of theory. If it wasn't, it would either be math, philosophy, or just pure bullshit. I agree with you that evolutionary theory isn't a very good theory, but I hold that it's better than creationism.

About your point that radioisotope dating methods may not be accurate due to changes in physical constants, please stop being ridiculous. Scientists have possible evidence for a 0.001% change in a physical constant unrelated to radioactive decay in a place 12 billion light years away and time 12 billion years ago. That's hardly reason to criticize radioisotope dating. You're obviously tremendously biased towards anything that might lend a shred of support to your theory. That's not objective science.

As to why I have issues with evolutionary theory, here are my tests for a good scientific theory:

1. Must be falsifiable. If there is no reasonable way it could be proved wrong, it's not science.

2. Must make verifiable predictions. If a theory doesn't make any predictions that can be checked, it's not terribly useful.

It's pretty damn hard to think of how you could disprove evolution. Just about anything you find, the biologists will make up an explanation for. Evolutionary theory also doesn't really make testable predictions. About all it's good for is explaining things after-the-fact. Of course, creationism fails both tests in an even worse manner. Thus, lacking a better alternative, I believe in evolution, but hold healthy doubts.

Re:Evolution vs. Creation debate

[magi]

It's pretty damn hard to think of how you could disprove evolution.

Just look at the creationist sites and you'll find hundreds of attempts to disprove evolution, usually by demonstrating apparent impossibilities. For example, a whale buried vertically through several geological strata would be kind of impossible according to standard theories of stratification. Of course, the only instance the creationists have given, is a false one. However, were the case really what they claim it is, it would give a heavy blow to geology (and therefore to evolutionary theory). Similar claims would include combined dinosaur and human fossils, etc, etc.

Just about anything you find, the biologists will make up an explanation for. Evolutionary theory also doesn't really make testable predictions.

It does. Just consider the basic idea that all species have begun from a single cell. Therefore, a raise in complexity over time would be required. We can therefore predict, that the organisms in young strata are, on average, more complex than the ones in much older strata. This is, in fact, what we have observed. There are, for example, no complex animals (such as mammals) in 3 billion years old strata, and the fossils actually have a very rough ascending trend in complexity. (Assuming that fossilised skeletal complexity correlates with genetic complexity.) We can also roughly observe the birth of radically new features, which the older fossils didn't have, such as wings.

Actually, the creationist hypothesis also makes a similar prediction; there would be no observable trend in the fossil record through the "apparent time". However, this hypothesis is in disagreement with the observations. Nevertheless, it's also testable in this way.

I guess it's often though that evolutionary theory can't make predictions because we can't observe large-scale evolution right now. But that's not at all necessary. We don't have to do it right now. To give an analogy, we can't "test" a murder after it has happened. However, we can prove it with evidence. For example, we can have theories about the murder of JFK, but can't "test" it. However, if we found out that there had been a surveillance camera filming the apartment where the killer would have been according to a theory, we could make a prediction that the film shows him, and the film could provide the observation. So the idea is that historical events can be observed through the record of evidence they leave, just as a nuclear physics experiment might be analyzed from film plates later. Similarly, to test the astrophysical prediction that some stars blow up at some time in their life, we don't actually have to test it with our Sun, but we can observe the explosions that happened thousands or millions years ago.

Re:Evolution vs. Creation debate

[then, it was nigh]

As to why I have issues with evolutionary theory, here are my tests for a good scientific theory:
1. Must be falsifiable. If there is no reasonable way it could be proved wrong, it's not science.
2. Must make verifiable predictions. If a theory doesn't make any predictions that can be checked, it's not terribly useful.

And evolution is falsifiable, and has made verifiable (and verified) predictions [talkorigins.org]. I commend the Gentle Reader to the Talk.Origins Archive [talkorigins.org], which has much information on these subjects.

Re:Evolution vs. Creation debate

[MadAhab]

When was God trademarked? About the time someone said not to use his name in vain.

Here and now? Wat? What fucking point is that? I got about 1 suicide bomber and 10 dead jews a week as evidence that faith in going to heaven make some folks more likely to do things that hurt themselves and others. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people focused on the quality of what's in front of them; and guess what? consequence-free pleasure-seeking isn't their philosophy or agenda. But you get your answers from what others tell you, not from reality, so what the fuck do you care?

In fact the quality of the here and now is the best reason to make the here and now better, not some arbitrary externality. "Do unto others" was meant to illustrate that feedback loop, but just because you claim to have faith doesn't mean you have eyes to see or ears to hear.

If you want to knock evolution, you better start knocking all the OBSERVED cases of evolution that occurred during modern, observed and recorded scientific history. If you want to embarrass a nation by being a backwards dumbass savage fuck, go move to afghanistan where your kind is welcome, and do it soon, before the godless and god-fearing but scientific asians walk all over your medieval ass.

Re:Evolution vs. Creation debate

[Mr. Barky]

It's one part in 100,000 over 15 billion years or so. For nearly all intents and purposes, these are constant. The error in measurement of the age of the earth is much greater than 1/100,000.

Re:fp

[Mike Schiraldi]

first post!

Yeah, but in another part of the universe, the number on your post might be something else.

Re:Unconstant Speed of Light

[mmontour]

It's the speed of light in a vacuum that's constant. In a material like water or glass, the speed of light is slower by a factor known as the refractive index. And yes, the refractive index of a material can be a function of the light's frequency (color).

Re:Unconstant Speed of Light

[LLatson]

You are confusing the speed of light in a vaccuum (space), which is a constant (C=3x10^8), with the speed of light in some other medium (not a vaccuum), which is variable and can be quite slow.

LL

Problems with science

[virg_mattes]

> After reading this article I'll be re-thinking my
> values. Are you a man enough to do that?

Man enough to rethink values, but not enough to post under your real nick?

Anyway, first off you're confusing relying on the scientific method versus relying on any particular result of applying the scientific method. It's easy to make mistakes using the scientific method. The point is to reapply it to your conclusions to ferret out the erroneous results.

Secondly, you're also confusing reliance on the scientific method (science) with scientific humanism, or atheism, both of which are philosophical beliefs. Since philosophy and science seek to answer different questions, you're comparing apples and angels. There's no conflict between the scientific method and most religious beliefs; in fact, percentage-wise most scientists believe in a higher being. The only time they come into conflict is when someone tries to apply the scientific method to a philosophical idea, or tries to apply belief to an experiment. As said above, science and philosophy can be mixed, but cannot be substituted.

Perhaps, then, rethinking your values merely means expanding your mind to encompass both sides of the issue, thereby finding that there's not really a contradiction between them.

Virg

P.S.: I must take issue with your calling science a human creation. The scientific method is application of simple logic and experiment, and the results can describe things within or outside of human influence For example, the way electricity behaves has been experimentally defined by scientists, but none would argue that those scientists created the phenomenon just because they came up with rules to describe its behavior.

Re:Problems with science

[Caid Raspa]

There's no conflict between the scientific method and most religious beliefs; in fact, percentage-wise most scientists believe in a higher being.

Are you sure of the percentage, and what kind of 'scientists' are counted in? I remember seeing a study on 47 Nobel laureates of chemistry and physics. 45 considered themselves non-religous, either atheist or agnostic. Two were christians. Of these scientists, only less than 5 per cent believed in a supreme being. I think this is an issue where selecting an unbiased sample is very important.

Another thing I would like to comment on is that religious belief does not always contain a belief in a higher being. Buddhist do not believe in any supreme being, (Buddha is a teacher, and a human, not a God) and they are usually considered as a religion. Or are you claiming Dalai Lama is not religious?

Problematics

[virg_mattes]

> Of these scientists, only less than 5 per cent believed in a supreme being.
> I think this is an issue where selecting an unbiased sample is very important.

Definitely something to consider, although I don't think that "Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry" necessarily represents an unbiased sample. It would be interesting to run the numbers by field, say, or by "level of achievement", insofar as that term could be defined.

> Another thing I would like to comment on is that religious
> belief does not always contain a belief in a higher being.

Good point. I consider atheism to be a religious belief as well, in that atheists believe in the absence of a higher being (as opposed to agnostics, who do not choose one way or the other). So, I will concede that although I didn't mean to connect religion to supreme beings, putting the sentence together the way I did had that effect. And in answer to your last question, I consider the Dalai Lama to be one of the best examples of how reverence need not be tied to a diety.

Virg

Re:time dialation

[Anonymous Coward]

There are such effects, and they are responsible for cosmological redshift and time dilation.

New news (and a no-registration-needed link)

[Bearpaw]

There is a new analysis that seems to confirm what your reference only speculated about. That's news.

See New Scientist [newscientist.com].

Re:New news (and a no-registration-needed link)

[markmoss]

The bad news is, I don't bother following New Scientist links because IMO for accuracy it ranks somewhere below National Enquirer...