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Evolving Electromagnetism?

Posted by Hemos on from the probably-not dept.

nugget writes "An article in the Sydney Morning Herald announced that scientists led by a team of NSW University astrophysicists in Australia have found evidence that one of the fundamental forces of physics, electromagnetism, has changed since the universe's creation some 14 billion years ago. This may prove what many scientists have suspected for some time. Electromagnetism may be relatively new and might have evolved sometime after the laws of physics started with the big bang. If it's correct, this is big news."

2 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Finally..... by pubudu · · Score: 3, Interesting
    People like you insist that the earth is only around 4 thousand years old (according to the bible) when we have perfect evidence that its age is in the billions.

    The evidence is far from "perfect", for it assumes the very thing it's trying to prove. The debate is one between modern science and revelation, each one claiming to be able to explain the All. Modern science claims a victory in the realm of cosmology because the age of the All according to the Bible is about 6000 years and the age according to our observations is something over 10 billion. Taking explainations of phenomena we observe today, we find that it would have taken several billion years for them to produce the world we observe now.

    Yet this proof only begs the question. In order to say the All is X billion years old based upon current observations, we must assume that the theories gleaned from such observations were applicable X billion years ago; the Bible says they were not. Showing that the Bible is in contradiction with this assumption does not prove this assumption, nor do any proofs based upon this assumption.

    This finding cannot sway the balance between the two in either direction. If the strength of the EM force does change over time, its change would presumably occur according to rules, is what the scientist would respond. Of course, if we cannot use scientific theories to predict the actual situation at some arbitrary point in the past included in the set of points that theory claims to be able to predict, then we can't actually say that the stated change has occurred.

    The debate between science and religion seems to have a mafia-trial character to me. The defense attorney says the prosecution's claim that his client is guilty of murder because he ordered the hit is preposterous, for medical expert after medical expert has testified that the victim died from a loss of blood caused by numerous holes in his body, caused by bullets fired by someone other than his client. The prosecution, on the other hand, repeatedly plays an audio tape of the order without actually showing that the person on the tape is the defendent. The defense says that it can't possible be his client, for we know that the victim bled to death...

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    under-paid karma whore

  2. Re:I thought that this was already accepted. by krlynch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Doesn't current theory describe the EM force as condensing out of the Electro-Weak force early in the universe's creation?

    Yes, current theory states something to that effect (it says that electromagnetism is the left over "unbroken gauge symmetry" of the more fundamental "electroweak gauge symmetry", which "breaks spontaneously" as the universe cools, so that only the photon remains massless, while the Z and W bosons become very heavy). But, this discovery is saying something different. In the standard theory, after the electroweak symmetry breaks down to the electromagnetic symmetry, both the weak force and the electromagnetic force have strengths that are homogenous (the same at every point in space) and static (the same at every point in time). So, after electromagnetism emerges out of the big bang, right up to the current time, electricity has acted the same way everywhere in the universe.

    These experimental results suggest that quite the opposite is true; what they say is that it looks like the strength of the electromagnetic force is NOT static. The data suggest that electromagnetism was slightly weaker in the distant past than it is today, something in conflict with current theory. And the data seem quite compelling, from a quick read of the paper. What we need now is other research groups with different equipment to go and confirm this result, not just in kind but in number.

    This is quite an exciting time to be a physicist :-)