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Speed of Light Inconstant?

Posted by michael on from the still-can-count-on-death-and-taxes dept.

DHR writes "Australian scientists have discovered that light isn't quite as fast as it used to be." We've done previous stories on these findings. Those of you with subscriptions to Nature can read the actual paper, the rest of us will just have to suffer.

1 of 496 comments (clear)

  1. I actually read the paper... by Peter+T+Ermit · · Score: 5, Informative
    ... and it adds absolutely nothing to the argument over whether there are time-changing constants.

    As other people have pointed out, the fine-structure-constant-is-changing work came out a year ago. The fine structure constant is a function of the speed of light, c, and the charge of the electron, e.

    This particular article argues that e can't change much over time without causing inconsistencies, so they conclude that c must have been changing. No new data, no new support for the constant-is-changing theory. (And the original study was pretty damn flawed. This paper isn't bad.)