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."

Comments

This has already been proven

[scott1853]

Anybody that programs for Windows is familiar with the phenomenon of constants simply changing their values whenever the hell the OS feel like it.

Evolution vs. Creation debate

[cavemanf16]

So, this is good news for string theorists, bad news for evolutionists. 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? Sounds like the scientists from both sides of the pond (the psuedo science called Evolutionary Theory and the observational science called physics) should start coordinating a little better on exactly what constitutes scientific fact.

Yes, I'm karma whoring, and No, I don't care if you mod me down.

This is also good news for Creation Science

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the biggest supposed holes in a Young Earth (6000 years or so) theory is that we can (apparently) see the light of stars and galaxies that are millions of light years away, obviously this is problematic if you say the universe is only 6000 years old. But now that it has been shown that these constants (such as speed of light) may not be constant at all it becomes easy to demonstrate that if the speed of light were much faster early in creation (6000 years ago or so) we can easily account for these great distances and (apparently) large time scales. Once again science was just guessing and the Word had it right all along.

Will they still say that the universe is 15 billion years old? I hope not but they probably will :(