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

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.

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: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.

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:fp

[Mike Schiraldi]

first post!

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

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.

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

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...

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.

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: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

[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.

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 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: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: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 for more info.

the paper

[bcrowell]

The paper is here.

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.

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.

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: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]

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.

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?

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

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 (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
• h = Planck's constant
• 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.

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..

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."

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.

Re:Reevaluation of constants..

[AUSketch]

Will this myth never end?

Reevaluation of constants..

[CDanek]

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

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.."