Fundamental Constant Possibly Inconsistent

dylanduck writes "Cosmologists have begun thinking that yet another fundamental constant of nature is, er, not constant. The constant in question is the ratio of a proton's mass to that of an electron. It governs the strong nuclear force but there's no explanation for why that ratio should be constant. If true it would provide support for string theory, which predicts extra spatial dimensions." From the article: "Researchers at the Free University in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the European Southern Observatory in Chile discovered the variation in mu. They did it by comparing the spectrum of molecular hydrogen gas in the laboratory to what it was in quasars 12 billion light years away. The spectrum depends on the relative masses of protons and electrons in the molecule."

Comments

Perhaps their instruments are wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

and need some adjusting.

Thus proving once and for all

[Anonymous Coward]

...that God is a woman.

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[firl]

Is that because women aren't constant?

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[Quaoar]

Well both the electron and the proton look an awful lot like periods...

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[UnknownSoldier]

If they constantly aren't constant, does that make them constant? ;-)

--
Constants aren't.
Variables are.
  - Murphy's (Computer) Law

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[Randolpho]

There's a fix for that these days... it's called "Dietary Fiber". :)

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[charleste]

Speaking as a woman ... and I *am* one (that's "shar-LESTE" - not Charles T.E.)... Are you insinuating that being consistently inconsistent isn't very consistent? Because it is.

BTW - you *should* know what I'm pissed off about - you know what I mean when I say "Nothing".

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[homebrewmike]

Thanks, Chuck.

(Never expose your weakness on /. For instance, I'm deathly afraid of the color green, and.. oh, crap.)

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[sentientbeing]

Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[jbailey999]

Well, speaking *near* a woman...

Actually, if I say anything about this out loud, I'll probably get beaten. Perhaps I'll shutup now.

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[Anonymous Coward]

It's common knowledge that they're inconstant as the moon. Duh, don't you know your Shakespeare? Oh yeah, this is /., nevermind.

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[Descalzo]

You must really have problems with green crap, then. Don't eat black licorice.

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[gstoddart]

If they constantly aren't constant, does that make them constant? ;-)

Well, since the only constant is change, and constants aren't, then constants are constantly changing, and therefore constant.

I think we're sill good. :-P

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[ameline]

> God is a woman.

Then I'm going to hell, and I won't even know why. :-)

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[Anonymous Coward]

*BECAUSE*

...you bastard...

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[QMO]

Specifically Twizzler's black.
It is the best licorice there is, but that dye they use to make it black...

Electron Constants not Constant??!!

[FreezerJam]

Haven't I heard that one before?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869/

Re:Electron Constants not Constant??!!

[FreezerJam]

...maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_Earth is more informative.

(not in the habit of checking Wikipedia for movie details ... hmm)

Re:Electron Constants not Constant??!!

[LiquidCoooled]

It certainly is more presentable.
I hate the way imdb links don't name the film in question.
Even if it was some parameter like http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869?TheQuietEarth would be better

Re:Electron Constants not Constant??!!

[JoshDM]

Dammit, not on DVD and therefore not on NetFlix.

Re:Electron Constants not Constant??!!

[xoran99]

Amazon Linky Apparently, it's coming out on DVD in June! Put it in your queue!

Questionable

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad they're doing this research, but I would assume the quazar is moving away from them. How easy is it for them to take this into account? How can they take this into account? Are they different only because of experimental error?

Re:Questionable

[PiMuNu]

Usually they compare it with other lines in the Hydrogen spectrum. I can't get to the details of the paper, but I suspect that they are comparing the redshift of two different lines and checking that they are the same. If they are different something weird is going on.

Re:Questionable

[maxwell demon]

The molecular hydrogen spectrum is composed from different effects: The electronic states, for which the proton mass is almost negligible (because it's about the electron movement, and the protons are just so much heavier; just like you can neglect the movement of the sun when looking at planetary orbits), and the rotational and vibrational states, which depend strongly on the proton mass (because it's about the movement of the protons themselves). So any change in the ratio of electron and proton mass will show up in the ratio of energy differences between electronic and rotational/vibrational states. OTOH, the red shift due to the quasar speed just gives all observed energies a constant factor, without changing the ratio of energy differences (because that common factor will just cancel out).

Re:Questionable

[Anonymous Coward]

[different AC]

> without changing the ratio of energy differences

This is an amazingly bad assuption. I don't blame you for it though. I blame the physics community. To me, this is almost as bad as the stupid myth that two photons cannot pass eachother at relative velocity greater than C.

• Different quantum energy states cause a set of photons leave simultaneously at different energy levels from a quazar and travel through space for billions of years.
• A photon has mass, or at least a mass equivalent.
• EM frequency is proportional to energy level: Blue = higher energy, red = lower energy.
• [dumbing down:] When an EM field hits a boundary with a different impedance, it does some crazy shit. Part of the complex value of the wave gets reflected back into the original medium, and the transmitted photon can also experience a minor red-shift because it gives up some energy. We have no earthly idea of the impedance of the space through which these photons have passed, so we have no idea what to expect.
• Eventually the photons arrive at Earth, where we perceive them to be red-shifted because Earth is moving away from the quasar.
  

WTF would we think the energy levels of these photons should retain the exact same spacing as when they left the quazar? In my opinion, the fact that they measured a difference confirms my suspicion that they will not necessarily be the same.

Re:Questionable

[techno-vampire]

To me, this is almost as bad as the stupid myth that two photons cannot pass eachother at relative velocity greater than C.

It's obvious you know so little about Relativity that you have no idea how ignorant you are. Velocities don't add by simple arithmatic at relativistic speeds; they add in such a way that the total never exceeds c. Thus, two photons, each travelling at c in opposite directions have a relative velocity of c, no matter how counter-intuitive it seems.

In my opinion, the fact that they measured a difference confirms my suspicion that they will not necessarily be the same.

Your ignorant opinion is wrong. As red shift is a function of velocity, all the lines in a hydrogen atom's spectrum will be shifted by exactly the same ammount. I realize this is Slashdot, but try to learn something about the subject before you post.

Re:Questionable

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you've dumbed it down too much because you've confused the hell out of me.

stupid myth that two photons cannot pass eachother at relative velocity greater than C

I am not sure to what you are referring. What is their relative speed, 2c?

A photon has mass

That is Nobel prize worthy and news to me. I believe photons have energy. I believe photons have momentum. I do not believe photons have mass. I do not know what a "mass equivalent" is.

I really don't know what your talking about with regard to impedance mismatches and the impedance of space. It sounds like some 19th century mechanical model of the universe with hidden gears, levers, etc. You also cannot first talk about a photon traveling through space, then turn around and talk about what happens when an E&M field does something. You've now run into the classic photon-wave problem where you need to be clear whether you are talking about single photons, or a large ensemble of photons (a wave). This is the same mistake that people who go on and on about these "faster than light" experiments where they shoot a pulse of light at a medium and it appears to come out the other side before it enters; though most of these articles may go as far as to add a line or two disclaimer, it always comes back to the fact that you are talking about the difference between group and phase velocities, and in fact, you cannot do this with single photons. But I digress...

If the Earth and the quasar are moving away from one another, we do not perceive a red shift, we measure a red shift. There was in fact a red shift that happened. Just like the Doppler shift you hear when a siren moves towards or away from you. That wasn't some fancy trick that led you to perceive a different pitch, that was indeed the actual pitch of the siren as measured at the location of your ear.

Re:Questionable

[maxwell demon]

(Quoting completed)

> OTOH, the red shift due to the quasar speed just gives all observed energies a constant factor, without changing the ratio of energy differences

This is an amazingly bad assuption.

No, it's amazingly simple math.

Every frequency is scaled with a common factor f, which does not depend on the frequency. This is true both for the relativistic Doppler effect and the non-relativistic (medium-relative) Doppler effect (Ok, the cosmological red shift isn't exactly a Doppler effect, but it's a common factor nevertheless).

The frequency of the emitted light is, according to quantum mechanics, given by the difference of the energy levels; that is, if you compare the ratio of the differences of the energy levels, what you actually do is to compare the ratio of frequencies.

Thus if the measured light frequencies are nu1 and nu2, the red shift changes the ratio nu1/nu2 to (f*nu1)/(f*nu2). Thus the red shift cancels out.

Re:Questionable

[DenDude]

/* To me, this is almost as bad as the stupid myth that two photons cannot pass each other at relative velocity greater than C. */

Actually, that's not a myth.
Here's the q&d explanation: Each photon is travelling at c.
In the frame of reference of photon a, photon b would be at rest
In the frame of reference of photon b, photon a would be at rest
If there were a clock on each of the photons (remember, q&d)... The clock on photon b would appear stopped to any observer on photon a, and vice verce. Thus, at relativistic speeds, the time of the other photon is slowed to the point of stoppage. This is the effect that allows particles with half-lives in the nano-seconds to plummet all the way through our atmosphere and be detected at the ground. I believe the project to which I am referring is called "project cangaroo", but that might only be where the detectors are located.
In any case, it's not a myth, no matter how insane it sounds. The time dilation effect cancels out the increased velocity.

Re:Questionable

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm limited in the number of replies I can make, so I'm going to reply to all 4 replies to my post.

As a major disclaimer, I'll state that I subscribe to the "I care more about what's actual than what we merely perceive" school of thought. I do agree with the critics that say our reality is limited by what we observe; however, I look past the smoke and mirrors and say that true reality itself transcends our perceived reality. For those who fail to see the difference, true reality is what's really there; whereas perceived reality is what we think is there. All of that is to say: when I do not qualify my statements by saying "perceived" or "relativistic", I mean actual. So when I say relative velocity, I mean the true relative velocity.

There is a huge difference between actual relative velocity and perceived relative velocity. The former is v1-v2; the latter involves lorentz transforms. Please understand: The myth I refer to is that many uninformed people claim that relativity pertains to the actual relative velocity (v1-v2). However, the theory of relativity only describes how we perceive things given that information cannot travel faster than C. It does _not_ say that photon X and photon Y traveling in opposite directions somehow magically only travel at a relative speed of C; instead, it says that they perceive eachother to pass at C, and that an observer Z will only perceive them to pass at C.

Regarding photon mass, I meant that in a relativistic sense and even qualified it by specifying mass equivalent (i.e. energy). I'm sorry some of you got hung up on that, but it really is more enlightening (no pun intended) to speak in terms of mass. I should have removed that bullet when I removed the later points that used the terminology. I was going to talk about gravitational lensing and other nonlinear effects related to the mass equivalent (i.e. energy) of the photon.

To the first reply, I'm saying that a naive assumption expects a linear redshift, but due to the unknowns involved you simply cannot make that assumption.

To the second reply, the redshift is not something that "happened". It only "happens" as you observe in a different frame. The photon is chasing you, but you're running away so the wavelength increases proportional to the speed. (I should also point out that the impedance mismatch between the two frames is not taken into account, and that can introduce nonlinear changes.) I should also point out that a single photon can simultaneously take two different paths, so don't be so sure that energy changes of a wave are not also experienced by the individual photons. ;-) Nobody on earth (including me) is qualified to say with any kind of certainty what actually happens -- only that our observations and our theories predicting what we should observe seem to be consistent or not. In this case, the experiment sides with my hunch.

To the third reply, again: I've outlined why I think the model is too simple. This experiment merely confirms that yes, the model is too simple. TFA talks about extra dimensions required to account for the effect. (also see the previous paragraph)

To the fourth reply, read the first paragraph in this reply. I'm not disputing relativity. I'm merely pointing out that many people do not understand that it's only talking about our perception of reality. [I'm bitter on this point, because in 7th grade some asshat 8th grader refused to conceed this point and that's what eventually led me to becoming a mathematician/electrical engineer instead of a physicist.]

Ob. Farnsworth quote

[dc29A]

Farnsworth: These are the dark matter engine I invented. They allow my starship to travel between galaxies in mere hours.

Cubert: That's impossible. You can't go faster than the speed of light.

Farnsworth: Of course not. That's why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208.

Re:Ob. Farnsworth quote

[visgoth]

Hogwash! The professor is obviously senile, as the ship cannot ever go faster than light, since the ship itself never moves. The Dark Matter Engine moves the entire universe around the ship.

Yeah, some people struggle with Heisenberg.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal would have known this years ago. Its hard to believe that people in this field can be so dense.

Come on guys. Go back to school. Spend a little more time reading your texbooks, and get your act together.

Re:Yeah, some people struggle with Heisenberg.

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen you insensitve clod - that IS the point - they weren't always this dense - the density constant changed and now they are more dense :-(

Re:Yeah, some people struggle with Heisenberg.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the back of their minds, they knew it. They just weren't certain about it.

Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Snarfangel]

...isn't constant, either. Perhaps we can rename them "fundamental variables."

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[fireboy1919]

No, constant is good. It's just that for very large or small values of the constant, it's sometimes different.

1!=2 is, for example, always true, except for with very small values of 2 or very large values of 1. Possibly you need both small values of 2 and large values of 1.

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Urgh... that will mess up optimization.

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Anonymous Coward]

Constants are never *really* constant. For some gentoo fun, #define M_PI 3 in /usr/include/math.h and see what happens after an emerge world.

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Bravoc]

Seems to me, that since these occour naturally in our environment, we should call them..... environment variables Sorry, I couldn't resist

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[hunterx11]

Constant is constant of course, but it depends on what your definition of the word "is" is.

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[roystgnr]

Urgh... that will mess up optimization.

Well, that's what God gets for using C++. You think you've got a well-designed system, then you realize that to make your next set of changes work you're going to have to throw in a bunch of const_casts or mutables.

You can tell He's new to object oriented programming, too - he's got this whole overeager class hierarchy of tau derived from muon derived from electron, top derived from charm derived from up, and on and on, but then when it's finally time to put together the universe He gets sick of the whole thing and builds all His matter from the base classes!

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Enzo the Baker]

It's a corollary to "the more things change the more they stay the same."

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[2names]

I wish I had some mod points, that was bloody brilliant.

Well said.

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Eccles]

And don't get my started on his overuse of strings for everything...

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Lauri Alanko]

Well, that's what God gets for using C++.

A common misconception. However, as all True Believers know, God wrote in Lisp:

Now, some folks on the Internet put their faith in C++.
They swear that it's so powerful, it's what God used for us.
And maybe it lets mortals dredge their objects from the C.
But I think that explains why only God can make a tree.

For God wrote in Lisp code....

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[hackstraw]

Perhaps we can rename them "fundamental variables."

Or, perhaps, "fundamental flaw".

Hang on a second...

[iainl]

...if the ratio is changing, doesn't that mean that either electrons or protons (probably both) have changed mass?

How the hell does that work?

Re:Hang on a second...

[Opportunist]

It just means the Proton should probably cut back on fast food. It sure as hell changed my mass considerably!

Re:Hang on a second...

[PiMuNu]

Don't forget the proton is a composite of quarks. So the mass of the proton is a function of the mass of the quarks and the binding energy. A hack but E=mc^2, so m(proton) = m(quarks) - (binding energy)/c^2. The binding energy changes if the strengths of the forces that bind it change. This means that a change in the electromagnetic force (e.g. changing alpha fine structure constant) or the strong force will change the mass also. Of course, the mass of the electrons or quarks could have changed as well :P

Re:Hang on a second...

[Himring]

How does this affect 88MPH and the need for 1.21 jiggawatts?....

Re:Hang on a second...

[PiMuNu]

Well you have to go back in time a couple of billion years before it has any effect...

Re:Hang on a second...

[budgenator]

I thought it was E^2 = m^2C^4p^2q^2 for some strange reason of course i'm merely a guilded missile technician, not a rocket scientist

Re:Hang on a second...

[jacen_sunstrider]

of course i'm merely a guilded missile technician, not a rocket scientist

Awesome! Are you in D&C (Duck and Cover), WMD (Weapons of Mass Delight) or one of the smaller guilds? And what server are you on?

Re:Hang on a second...

[tillerman35]

All this means is that the speed of light has changed.

Re:Hang on a second...

[iainl]

D'oh, I should have figured out that myself, really. It's been a good decade since I last did any nuclear physics in anger.

Re:Hang on a second...

[geekoid]

I thought it meant that they castrated missile technician.

Re:Hang on a second...

[PiMuNu]

Yes. But I'm talking about rest masses - and if you use my formula for anything real, you're in trouble... it's hand waving rather than science

Re:Hang on a second...

[budgenator]

I almost started to understand quantum mechanics once, but decided sanity or at least my approximation of it was more important.

Re:Hang on a second...

[PiMuNu]

Lol... know what you mean. You're right, the formula is E^2 = m^2 c^4 + p^2 c^2. But for a typical electron in a hydrogen atom, momentum is about 1/10,000 its rest mass (taking c=1) so these effects are small. Basically E=mc^2 is a good approximation here.

Re:Hang on a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guilded Missile Technician? You put gold leaf on missiles now? Wow, so that's why they're so expensive.

Re:Hang on a second...

[tengwar]

They changed the definition of m. You had a modern textbook, but it's the same formula.

The Dawn of Quantish Physics ?

[Anonymous Coward]

E=MC^2 +/- 20%

Re:The Dawn of Quantish Physics ?

[adavies42]

I prefer the engineers' version: E=mc^2 +/- 3dB

Blah Blah Blah Scientist Words

[Dinglenuts]

Oof I am unable to comprehend a single sentence of this article. Blasted hangovers.

Could we show 'New Scientist' more prominently?

[Anonymous Coward]

Grr. I don't mind RTFA, but I like to know what I'm getting into... :)

See, neutrino's having a rest mass - that was a story. A somewhat reproduced result even - call it science. :)

"If true"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Any inconsistency will always provide support for the string theory. Why? Because the essence of that fabulous theory is that everything is more or less random. Great!

Re:"If true"

[NichG]

Well, it'd be an example of a piece of experimental evidence in a field where basically you can't test anything because of the lack of experimental evidence. If that mass ratio varies, then this also means we can measure how it varies, and each theory can make a prediction and... I suspect they bring up string theory because thats the one everyone knows, not because this particular piece of evidence gives support to string theory only. But on the other hand, I can't really say off the top of my head which of the successor theories predicts that the masses of composite particles can have a time dependence (which would amount to either the strength of the strong force or electromagnetic force having a time dependence, or the quark and/or electron self-masses have a time dependence). If all of them do, and can't actually predict how it would vary, then yeah this isn't so useful.

But if its true its still pretty neat and its like water in the desert for the field of post-QM/GR theories.

Does this mean

[LoonyMike]

that I face the risk that the first 100 digits of PI that I have memorized could change, and the knowledge becomes useless?

This is actually true, I do know the first 100 digits by heart.

Re:Does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

... As long as 4 * Sum from n=1 to n=infinity of -1^(n-1)/(2n-1) doesn't change, I think you're all right...

Re:Does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you have no idea where the clitoris is.

Re:Does this mean

[maxwell demon]

that I face the risk that the first 100 digits of PI that I have memorized could change, and the knowledge becomes useless?

Well, that was true since Einstein: The value of pi as you learned it is only valid in Euklidean (flat) space, and our space is Riemannian (curved). However, to your relieve, the Riemannian space is locally Euclidean, so if you restrict yourself to a small enough volume, your 100 digits are accurate again. Unless you get into trouble with quantum physics (I'm now too lazy to calculate if you could get 100 digits of pi right on Earth without getting close to the Planck length).

Re:Does this mean

[LoonyMike]

Thanks for the info.
Next time I brag about this, I'll be sure to mention that those are the 100 first digits of PI in Euclidean space.

Re:Does this mean

[bhaberman]

That doesn't sound quite right. I think Riemannian space is locally Euclidean in a sort of differential topological sense, in that you can continuously assign coordinates in Euclidean space to points, and changes in coordinates are smooth. However in a geometric sense Riemannian space is not necessarily locally Euclidean, in the sense that this identification with Euclidean space will NOT give you the right distances between points, angles between lines, and so on.

For example, you can continuously and smoothly deform an open (without edges) hemisphere (Riemannian manifold) into Euclidean space. However, this doesn't change the fact that no matter how "local" you get -- no matter how small a patch of the hemisphere you take, the angles in a triangle drawn on this hemisphere will not add up to pi. (I think they will be 3pi/2, but I'm not sure). This is because the concept of angle and distance depend only on the Riemannian metric, and not the merely topological identification with Euclidean space.

Interestingly enough, it is possible that the Universe is "globally Euclidean", in that except for deformations due to gravity the "big picture" is Euclidean.

I don't know enough about GR to say if you can get to "locally Euclidean" in the sense you are referring to somewhere in the universe, but I am pretty sure that there are many places where you can't get to Euclidean no matter how far you zoom in, since I don't think curvature, which is intrinsic and a point property (I think), goes away when you zoom in.

Re:Does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

Riemannian manifolds are said to be locally Euclidean in the sense that the tangent vector space at any point in the manifold is Euclidean (has a Euclidean inner product).

Re:Does this mean

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

However, this doesn't change the fact that no matter how "local" you get -- no matter how small a patch of the hemisphere you take, the angles in a triangle drawn on this hemisphere will not add up to pi.

But it will be really, really, really close. Probably closer than you could get with any Pi algorithim after 100 computations.

Re:Does this mean

[statusbar]

So the pure theoretical value of PI in a euclidian space is not what we would measure in this universe. Does that mean that if there were multiple universes, regardless of any other physical quantities or constants changing, our concept of PI would not change? Because PI is a concept not a measurement - PI 'transcends universes'.. heh, i'm starting to sound new age.

--jeffk++

Re:Does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFLMAO !!
Thanks dude, funniest slashdot post all year. You made my day.

Re:Does this mean

[eclectro]

And yet you have no idea where the clitoris is.

Even if he did, he wouldn't know how to use his digits.

Re:Does this mean

[maxwell demon]

Well, take conventional sphere as an example (that certainly is a Riemannian surface). The spherical excess E (i.e. the difference of the sum of the angles of a spherical triangle to pi) is given by

tan(E/4) = sqrt(tan(s/2)*tan((s-a)/2)*tan((s-b)/2)*tan((s-c)/ 2))

with s = (a + b + c)/2, and a, b, c the sides of the triangle (divided by sphere radius if that is not 1).

Now you can see that if a, b, c go to zero, so does E. That is, you can make the spherical excess arbitrary small (i.e. making the sum of the angles arbitrary close to pi) by just making the triangle small enough. Yes, it will never be exactly pi, but the difference can certainly be made small enough that it will not show up in the first 100 digits (of course, if the sphere has earth radius, then your triangle will have to have sides far smaller than Planck length to get the first 100 digits right (s/r has to be below about 10^-50, but the planck length is just about 10^-35 meters).

Now, the curvature radius of space around earth is IIRC about one light year (roughly 10^16 meters), so as long as you keep below about 10^-36 meters, you should be OK in the first 100 digits of pi (at least as far as the sum of angles in a triangle is concerned). Unfortunately, this is still below planck length, so you just won't get your 100 digits in the real world anyway :-)

Ok, let's look at circumference over diameter instead. Let's embed a sphere of radius R into 3D euclidean space (because that simplifies the calculations). Now let's assume we have a circle with radius r on the sphere. then that circle has the radius R sin(r/R) in the embedding euclidean space, thus its circumference is 2 pi R sin(r/R), which gives a "spherical pi" of pi R/r sin(r/R), which for small r can be Taylor-expanded to pi (1 - 1/6 (r/R)^2 + O((r/R)^4)). Again, we need r/R to be below about 10^-50 to get pi right in the first 100 digits.

Also note that in all considerations above, no deformation of the sphere is done. The topology (which is a global property of the sphere) doesn't enter into the picture (after all, we are making the triangle small, thus probing only local properties of the sphere).

Re:Does this mean

[aqfire]

I only know 60, I got lazy.

Re:Does this mean

[maxwell demon]

Well, assuming in the other universe there are intelligent beings, and those intelligent beings develop the mathematical concepts of real numbers and of Euclidean space, and for some reason they ask for the ration of circumference and diameter of a circle in Euclidean space, they'll find the same value.

Of course a completely different question is, assuming there exists an universe which is not locally euclidean, and which contains intelligent beings, will they develop the (alien to them) concept of Euclidean space?

Re:Does this mean

[statusbar]

Good points, but... Why does the concept of PI require intelligent beings? Are there any intelligent beings in OUR universe?

--jeffk++

Re:Does this mean

[bhaberman]

Thanks! I was thinking of "local" more in the sense of "there exists a neighborhood such that", and less in the sense of "there exists a neighborhood such that almost". That's one of the problems with math, when you get into "almost", "local", and such. For example, I can think of at least at least three definitions of "almost everywhere"; there's something I've seen called "quasi-everywhere" (except on nowhere dense), almost uniform convergence, which is completely different, etc.

Re:Does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done, sir!

Re:Does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

The value of Pi won't change, you just won't be able to use it to compare diameters and Circumferences of circles... If you solve the differential equation y''=-y, y(0)=1 you will still find that its first positive root is exactly Pi/4, and the sum of the recipricles of the squares of all positive integers is still Pi^2/6, no matter how curved the universe you live in turns out to be.

Re:Does this mean

[Burb]

No. Pi is a mathematical constant. It's not defined by geometry any more, and hasn't been since way before Einstein. True, in Euclidean space it is the ration of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. But it's generally defined as the limit of an infinite series isn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Definition

Intelligent Design?

[RSquaredW]

Hmm, wasn't one of the arguments for intelligent design that the fundamental constants had to be "just right" for the universe to exist? If the shifts of other dimensions causes shifts in our universal constants...another nail in the necessity-of-God argument's coffin?

String theory makes my head hurt.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you develop finer methods of measurement as technology progresses, and you find that you can now calculate a constant that was before _KNOWN_, to a certain level of finite precision, at a higher level of finite precision, does not mean that the constant has changed. It just means you have refined your methods of measurement.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[dc29A]

Hmm, wasn't one of the arguments for intelligent design that the fundamental constants had to be "just right" for the universe to exist? If the shifts of other dimensions causes shifts in our universal constants...another nail in the necessity-of-God argument's coffin?

Won't religious fanatics just say that God is testing their faith? Or, that God is currently changing the universe, and infact that is a proof that God does exist? Faith for quite a few people is much stronger than logical reason.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Truly a testament to His greatness that even with a change in a cosmological constant we are still alive at all.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Straif]

I saw the argument coming but I was really hoping no one would bring ID/Evo into this.

However I was seeing the case from the other side as 'proof' that if such fundemental scientific principles can be shown to be inaccurate, how much 'faith' can we have in the theory of Evolution which is laregely based on much less demonstrable certainties that the fields of physics and math.

Either way, I say just screw it and wait till you're dead. It's the only way to know who's right for sure anyway.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps even the laws of physics in the universe as we know it are subject to evolutionary mechanisms. Who knows!

The reason everything "just works" is just that. The ones that didn't do not exist.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Tiger4]

"wasn't one of the arguments for intelligent design that the fundamental constants had to be "just right" for the universe to exist?"

I think not... *POOF!*

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Chicken04GTO]

Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Maybe the calculations are off. Maybe the constant is changing. We are still here, so obviously it doesn't matter *that* much. But im sure people who are extremists on both sides of the ID fence will somehow word it in such a way to support their own fanatical viewpoints.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

God uses a Mac running OS 10.4, so all the variables are hidden by the operating system.

(He switched from Linux on the 3rd day, because he was torn between vi and emacs, plus he wanted a GUI that was not KDE while he was populating the earth.)

Re:Intelligent Design?

[zbyte64]

No. In fact certain ID scientists do believe that certain constants were different about 4000 years ago. This has to do with the helium diffusion rates in zircon crystals and some other junk RATE project. Granted its a different constant, but it does mean that ID scientists aren't opposed to "constants" being changed. Now I don't really like their explanation as to how this happened (enter hand of God) but it does show some dating inconsitiencies (that greatly exceed error margins). But what really gets me is you're throwing around ideas without having any clue... I suppose thats /. for you.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[bw_bur]

Obviously I haven't RTFA, but even a cursory glance through the summary reveals that this is not what has happened here. The claim is not that the value of the constant has been determined more accurately, but that it is not constant at all. The value itself has changed, not just the accuracy to which we are able to measure it.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard way to find out buddy.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[stanmann]

Christians and IDers don't disagree with entropy, and decay of constants, they do find it difficult to explain the lack of entropy that Evolution requires, and No, I'm NOT interested in rehashing the open/closed system discussion.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[kurzweilfreak]

This is called the Fecund Universe Theorydeveloped by Lee Smolin. The wikipedia article linked here mentions that the theory includes concepts of reproduction and mutation, but not natural selection, but then goes on to talk about universes "favoring" the creation of other universes that also create many black holes that also create their own children universes. I would consider that a form of natural selection. Combined with the Anthropic Principle, it provides a rational for us being here that makes sense.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[someone1234]

Nah, it simply means God played a lil' with the knobs of the Universum machine :)

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Illbay]

...another nail in the necessity-of-God argument's coffin?

But wouldn't God know what should be constant and what should be variable?

Sorry, I have a far, far more difficult time getting my mind around "it's all just mere chance" than "God is in the details."

Re:Intelligent Design?

[brian0918]

"Faith for quite a few people is much stronger than logical reason."

If they had faith, why would they need "proof that God does exist"?

Re:Intelligent Design?

[aqfire]

Interestingly enough, the article on Digg mentions that an alternate possibility was that the speed of light has slowed down, which coincidentally is one of the arguments that has been made by Setterfield and others for the apparent distance of stars in our galaxy.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Digital Vomit]

"Hmm, wasn't one of the arguments for intelligent design that the fundamental constants had to be "just right" for the universe to exist? If the shifts of other dimensions causes shifts in our universal constants...another nail in the necessity-of-God argument's coffin?"

The summary brought up ID in my mind, too, but in the opposite way: that the universe was being tweaked to affect some unknown purpose.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[budgenator]

maybe it's not some much the constant has changed as it is the constance involves factors we are not aware of and maybe be able to become aware of because of our reference frame.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[bigpat]

Hmm, wasn't one of the arguments for intelligent design that the fundamental constants had to be "just right" for the universe to exist? If the shifts of other dimensions causes shifts in our universal constants...another nail in the necessity-of-God argument's coffin?

Can't argue with circular reasoning... just because.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[chudnall]

Why is this +5 interesting? Is there really such a great majority of people with mod points that love seeing other people's beliefs denigrated and ridiculed? I don't agree with what the ID people are saying either, but that's no reason to take gratuitous potshots at it at every conceivable opportunity. Besides, it's getting really old. Why must we wade through this stuff in every other science article? Can we start modding these ID posts (for or against) troll or offtopic? pretty please?

Re:Intelligent Design?

[podperson]

Back in Galileo's time, arguing that the Earth orbited the sun appeared to be antithetical to Christian beliefs. They got over it. If they understood Physics (which shows the Universe to be somewhat older than 6000 years no matter how you slice it) then Fundamentalists would be messing with Physics textbooks instead of Biology textbooks.

Perhaps we should start arguing for the word "Christianity" to be replaced with "Groundless Conjecture of Christianity" in all textbooks.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Straif]

Just pointing out the obvious.

With all the circular arguments that go on here whenever the ID/Evo issues raises it's ugly head it's clear that the issue is not going to be resolved on Slashdot, or anywhere else for that metter, anytime soon.

Since one relies on an unprovable pretext (the existance of a God) and the other on a set of circumstances that cannot be recreated in a lab (unless you have the time to create a primordial soup and wait for a fish to crawl out of it) then it's pretty much a matter of 'faith' no matter which camp you fall into.

I'm pretty much a creationist/evolutionist anyway. I believe in the existance of God but also have no problem believing he used evolution as a tool to get things where they are today. I just never understood why so many people on both sides feel the need to fight tooth and nail to try and make those systems appear mutually exclusive when there isn't really a need.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[ilctoh]

Don't get confused.... the "necessity of God" theory and the Intelligent Design theory are two completely different things, and can be debated using different and unrelated arguments.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[HiThere]

Well, if you are going to postulate some creator, or group of creators...why assume ANY of the guesses are correct? There's a much larger number of possibilities that NOBODY has ever taken seriously and which aren't any more absurd.

Personally, I tend toward the view that gods ARE actual, and that they are the descriptions of the anthropormorphizeable archtypes. Thus they exist in, and are a part of, the material world. What they create is the consciousness which perceives it, and the form in which the consicousness perceives it. They are largely genetically specified (partially epigenetic?), and thus identical in essence across a wide spectrum of people, though the manifestation may be quite different. (It gets more complex, but don't bother. I think the theory is consistent, but I don't even have any evidence for THAT. I adopted it to explain a few personal experiences while following a hermetic path.)

Re:Intelligent Design?

[HiThere]

That's a deliciously ambiguous post. I can't tell wether it's sarcastic or not, and I can't tell whether it's a troll or serious.

I'm fairly certain that it wasn't intentionally ambiguous, but only because few have that as a goal. Delicious.

FWIW, and to clarify *this* post, I'm appreciating it as a poet. In such a role I find ambiguous lines to frequently be the most powerful. (It's not a hat I wear often, but it's been an occasional mode of expression since grade school. I've produced some monumentally bad poems, and a few small ones I've thought rather good. As a friend said "Time and the moth are the only true critics", and by their standards my works will be evanescent, as I've never published widely.)

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of people with religious delusions who try to push their delusions onto others. If all people hear is their blather some will assume it's accepted fact, thereby creating more annoying blather. And an overweight of religious people has wide-ranging negative consequences for us all, such as more troublesome ignorant but powerful fundies like you USians have.

I'd like to see religion gone from the face of the earth and the believers who aren't just doing it out of conformism sent to psychologists to talk about the underlying causes that make them feel a need for religion.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Straif]

Sorry to break it to you Mr. AC (boy you do post a lot around here) but it takes as much faith to believe in a God as to not and if you even bother to read over your own wording you will see that it is just as much the dislike, or hatred, of religon that leads down the road to negativity.

Only an agnostic can claim any sort of insulation from the emotional highs and lows of the "is there/isn't there" debate because they just generally don't have a horse in the race.

P.S. Why is it that so many people try to use American citizenship as an insult on here for anyone with a conservative viewpoint? For the record, and this seems to come up almost every thread I'm in, I do not, nor have I ever, lived in the US. Please try to keep the debate to the point without feeling the need to throw in ad hoc, and pointless, guilt by association strawmen.

-= And now back to you regularly scheduled scientific discussion =-

Re:Intelligent Design?

[Anonymous Coward]

Religion is to a healthy psyche what spam is to email, cocksucker.

Hmm...

[PiMuNu]

It's interesting that they think the ratio effects the strong force. Electrons don't see the strong force, so I'm not sure that this is true - anyone know any better?

The result is accurate to 3.5 sigma - so (possibly) good to about 95 %. Based on a new model of H2 molecule, not sure how well verified it is. I suspect any fool could make any non-standard model measurement fit with string theory so I wouldn't read too much into that.

Re:Hmm...

[bw_bur]

Maybe they just got it backwards in the article. Perhaps they should have said that a change in the value of mu implies a change in the strong force (assuming that the change in the mass ratio is due to a corresponding change in the binding energy of the proton).

Re:Hmm...

[SteveFoerster]

I suspect any fool could make any non-standard model measurement fit with string theory so I wouldn't read too much into that.

Well, for certain very specific values of "any fool"....

Re:Hmm...

[jlkelley]

A 3.5 sigma result (if the statistics are correct) is much better than 95% -- it excludes chance fluctuations to 99.95%. However, it's not accepted as strong enough for proof of discovery (people start really paying attention at 5 sigma). And for something as extraordinary as this result, they will likely need confirmation with a totally different experimental technique.

Are the laws of physics changing themselves ?

[karvind]

Being an amature scientist (engineer by profession) I always wonder why the laws in physics be constant as well ? Never got any satisfactory (and comprehensible) answer yet. To certain extent, it is equally important as 'changing' constants as well.

Also I would like to know little more about the error analysis here. A claim like 0.002% should be carefully checked to make sure about the measurement limitations etc.

Readers are directed to another good article (not flooded with scientific jargon).

Re:Are the laws of physics changing themselves ?

[NeutronCowboy]

It is assumed the laws of physics don't change because.... well, if they did, we'd be in a heap of trouble. :) This is really one of the more fundamental assumptions in science in general: if we don't see that something changes or has changed, we assume that it won't. Especially when it comes to physics. However, it is an assumption. It'll be an interesting day if we ever find out that they do change...

Re:Are the laws of physics changing themselves ?

[Hatta]

Being an amature scientist (engineer by profession) I always wonder why the laws in physics be constant as well ?

If the laws of physics are changing, there must be some law governing this change. If that law is changing there must be some other law governing that change. At some point it has to stop.

Re:Are the laws of physics changing themselves ?

[dumbgradstudent]

Well, there's no good reason to believe that physical laws *should* be constant. Remember, physics is an observational science after all, and when we look for physical laws, we look for something that doesn't change. For example, when looking at F = ma, we're really saying that the ratio of F and acceleration is governed by a constant that is defined by the object's mass. And when we find (through relativity) that mass is not necessarily constant, then we realize that F = ma is just an approximation to something more fundemental - something that doesn't change under a less restrictive condition. So we see that whenever a constant becomes something variable, it isn't so much that we expect the variable to be constant, it's just that our physical law is not as fundemental as we think. Physicists then propose the existence of something even more fundemental. Of course, all of this comes from a bit of reductionism.

Re:Are the laws of physics changing themselves ?

[deesine]

Why?

Re:Are the laws of physics changing themselves ?

[Dan Ost]

The human mind dislikes infinite regression because it violates our
intuitions about causality.

The rational mind abhores infinite regression because it implies that
certain catagories of truth are simply unknowable.

In any case, accepting an infinite regression does not lend itself to
progressive thought, so in the absence of compelling proof, it is better
to assume that infinite regressions cannot meaningfully exist.

Re:Are the laws of physics changing themselves ?

[geekoid]

UNless it's a feedback loop

Re:Are the laws of physics changing themselves ?

[jZnat]

Well, if you used Newton's real equation of F = dp/dt, it'd hold true in many more circumstances. Force is caused by a changing momentum over a period of time. Force particles (bosons?) have momentum (even photons do despite their masslessness), so that makes sense.

This has nothing to do with Heisenberg...

[unterderbrucke]

...Heisenberg deals with momentum and velocity, and by implication energy.

Re:This has nothing to do with Heisenberg...

[hubie]

Actually, the complementary variables are position and momentum, and energy and time. If you want to get really technical, you can throw in the quantum mechanical spins as well.

Re:This has nothing to do with Heisenberg...

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy and time complementary variables ? since when ? does time have an operator in QM ? DONT THINK SO !
Delta E x Delta t hbar is not a related to Heisenberg principle, but is derived from time dependent Schrödinger equation... GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT ! This is a common mistake made in LOTS OF QM books !

Re:This has nothing to do with Heisenberg...

[hubie]

I apologize to my excitable friend and to all the practicing quantum mechanics out there where I have indeed taken liberties with the energy-time relationship and have used them in the more colloquial manner in some QM books. It is true one way to derive the relationship is via the time-dependent Schroedinger equation, but it is not the only way.

As I am so strongly directed to get my facts right, and within this spirit, I should point out a few things. Though even Heisenberg put forth energy-time as well as position-momentum in his original description (as well as angle-action), Pauli noted in 1933 that there isn't any operator that is canoncally conjugate to the Hamiltonian, provided the Hamiltonian is bounded from below (which means they are not complementary variables in the strict sense that I have been taken to task). For what it is worth, Bohr considered them all "complementary quantities."

Now my anonymous critic points out that you derive it from the Schroedinger equation, but that is only one way. Forty-five years ago Ahranov and Bohm summarized this issue very nicely and it has been a topic of study even longer. A good, recent, review paper on this topic can be found by Busch.

As for the issue of the time operator, that is an interesting topic of study as well, and not so cut-and-dried as my combatitive friend would have you to believe. As an example with relation to quantum field theories, one can look at Wang et al.. I would not be a quick as my self-confident friend that there is not a time operator to be found.

In other news..

[Mechcommander]

Pi = 3.

Re:In other news..

[tehshen]

That's a very rational idea

Re:In other news..

[frdmfghtr]

Pi = 3.

Maybe where you come from, but in California, it is 3.

Recent discoveries in the legal profession have left scientists, many of whom still linger romantically in the Newtonian world, scrambling to catch up in the field of New Causality. In a case last month, a judge in Sacramento ruled in favor of changing the value of pi, thus acquitting a tire manufacturer of making tires that were not fully round. An appeal by scientists was thrown out for lack of evidence when the small courtroom could not physically accommodate a fully expressed representation of pi. The oblong tires in question were produced at the retrial, the judge said they looked round to him, the defense played the race card, and the value of pi was changed to 2.0.

From "Studies in the New Causality" by Steve Martin, http://www.compleatsteve.com/essays/causality.htm

Re:In other news..

[vux984]

That's a very rational idea

Not merely rational, its integral to the new world order...

Re:In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer 22/7, myself.

Re:In other news..

[nharmon]

Which makes it real to all of us.

Re:In other news..

[vux984]

Naturally. :p

Re:In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375 10582097494459230781640628620899...

That's all I have off the top of my head, sorry :)

Re:In other news..

[ameoba]

Arbitrarily changing universal constants can be a bad thing.

I remember one time, in my youth, while partaking of illicit mind-altering substances, looking at a window. More specifically, a small piece of stained-glass hanging from the window. Hanging by a suction cup.

A circular suction cup.

This piece of stained glass had been hanging on that very window for years.

Deep in thought, looking at this stained glass, I thought to myself "You know, if I was God, I'd probably round off pi to a million decimal places or so - it wouldn't really effect anything and it would make things much simpler". At which point, this stained glass, hanging from a circular suction cup, which had been there, unmoving, for years, due to a failure in the circular suction cup, fell to the ground and shattered.

I learned my lesson - don't mess with universal constants.

Re:In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but Pi does equal 3...
...
...for small values of Pi and for large values of 3, anyways.

Re:In other news..

[maddogsparky]

Cool story. Is it true?

Re:In other news..

[Bob3141592]

Pi = 3.

Looks like it's time to change my handle.

Re:In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

+/- -.14159 . . .

Re:In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it used to, but, you know, the constants are changing and all. Give it a few billion more years and Pi will equal an even 3.18.

When it hits 4, sell!

(MRC="digitize")

Re:In other news..

[ameoba]

yes

Re:In other news..

[ferd_farkle]

"Pi = 3" only in Kansas, where it is a local constant.

Re:In other news..

[Fyz]

This story reminds me of a time I was at a party for the physics class I was in.

The professor, in a cheerful stupor, started proclaiming to everyone the historical fact that Newton was a real asshole in his dealings with everyone who dared oppose him. He said he much preferred Leibniz. He then started hammering the table he was standing at, all the while yelling, "Newton is an asshole! Newton is an asshole!"

At which point a few newton decided to manifest themselves in the medium sized iron clock above his head, which fell on his head.

Don't mess with the ghosts of dead scientists!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hmmm... don't jump to believe this...

[Anonymous Coward]

When something is billions of light years away, it will be moving away from us rather quickly. I highly doubt it is possible to detect a 0.002% difference, as it would be too difficult to tell what change is due to its moving away, versus what change is due to the change in mass.

This is the type of knowledge to query in the back of your head until someday in the future when a theoretical physicist calculates that billions of years ago, the difference in mu should be approximately 0.00195%

Problem of Induction

[abscissa]

According to the problem of induction (see Wikipedia we can never be sure about anything no matter how many times we observe it. For example, no matter how many times I observe that I am burned when I touch a candle flame, I cannot be 100% certain that if I go to China in a month and touch a candle flame there, I will be burned by it. Solving this seeming impossibility is a major problem in philosophy and science.

This idea always seemed really silly to me. And beleieve it or not, I took an entire advanced level course on it in University. The entire reading for the half-year course was 80 pages.

However, in light of this article, it makes a bit more sense now. Universal "constants" may not be constant after all, but John Stewart Mill could have told us this ages ago :-)

Re:Problem of Induction

[NeutronCowboy]

To be completely correct, we can never be completely sure of anything that is inferred a posteriori - after observation. However, there is a priori knowledge, which is always completely correct. However, it is also reather useless, as it involves things like "A bachelor is single."

The solution to it has always been simple: assume that the number of correct observations with no counter observations indicates the likelyhood of something being "always". Then run with it. It's really only a problem in philosophy, not science.

Re:Problem of Induction

[ginbot462]

Any good Philosophy of Science course would go over some of the issues with induction (in the course I took it was the first topic). I am surprised the Wikipedia article mentions Popper but not Carnap who tried to assign a "value" to the induction. Of course, many people (including me) feel uncomfortable with this mix of statistics and logic.

Another point, one has to be put a lot of faith in other theories associated with a measurement/observation. Say, a distant galaxy is being looked at. I might be using some IR imaging satellite; I have to trust in the theories that developed it and the process that converted it's sensors into human readable data. This is especially true when we are talking about such subtle changes.

Some comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Historically speaking, there have been many claims in the past about various fundamental constants varying with time, and pretty much all of them have eventually not been corroborated by independent experimental groups. So take this with a large grain of salt.

Also, with regard to string theory... well, string theory is more or less compatible with practically any scenario you can think of, because it's so flexible (to phrase it charitably). Any "new physics" can generally be claimed to "support" some string-inspired model. This does not in itself constitute strong evidence for string theory (since you can cook up specific non-string models too).

Here is a link to one string theorist's (opinionated) blog regarding this issue. He notes that this ratio being constant is also consistent with string theory (and is what he believes is likely to be true).

Say goodbye to the anthropic principle.

[Rothron the Wise]

Your part of the universe will no longer be able to sustain life.
Bummer.

Re:Say goodbye to the anthropic principle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your part of the universe will no longer be able to sustain life.

However, those of us who believe in the misanthropic principle are vindicated.

Re:Say goodbye to the anthropic principle.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the funniest thing I've read the whole day! Thank you!

Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did Slashdot start posting substantive stories? What are they, trading places with Ars these days?

The spectrum depends on the relative masses ...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the only thing the spectrum depends on. Spectra also change because of external fields and forces. Concluding that the spectrum is different because the ratio of masses has changed is jumping to conclusions.

You know what this means...

[tomcres]

We're fucked!

Re:You know what this means...

[friendswelcome]

> We're fucked!
This could be what it looks like when fundamental structures wind down, like a top losing its spin over time. When the spinning stops, then we're fucked.

Other constants

[cpu_fusion]

Why can't other constants, like say pi, be variable as well? Allow pi to vary, and you have the warping of space. How is that so strange? What assume constants are constant? (I really am curious, not trolling.)

Re:Other constants

[tylersoze]

Well mathematical constants like pi really are constant which I would hope would be obvious. :) Pi doesn't have anything to do with the warping of space, it's just a value that is defined to be the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter in flat Euclidean space. Fundamental "constants" are just values plugged into physics equations that we just happen to assume to be constant. If we find that they're not constant then we really shouldn't be calling them constants.

Re:Other constants

[dr_davel]

Pi is a mathematical constant, not a physical one. There is no way it can vary, just like the number "2" can't vary.

Re:Other constants

[cpu_fusion]

I think I follow you. In my thinking I was considering the observed properties of a circle, not the mathematical absolute of a circle.

Say I observe a spherical object which is impossibly perfect, matching the mathematical properties of a sphere. Now let's say the observed value of pi changes within that sphere, and as a result I observe the volume of the sphere growing while the surface area of the sphere remains constant.

You are saying: congratulations, you've changed the sphere into a non-euclidean space, but pi is still 3.14..., you're going to need another interpretation of pi for this new non-euclidean space.

You might also say I'm "tripping balls", but I digress.

Re:Other constants

[Decaff]

Why can't other constants, like say pi, be variable as well?

Pi is not a physical constant. It is the result of a mathematical expression. It can't change.

Re:Other constants

[2short]

Pi is the ratio of a circles circumference to it's diameter, in a euclidean space. If you extend the idea of Pi into a non-euclidean space, it is up to you to define that extension. Pi has no commonly accepted definition in a non-euclidean space. In any case, Pi, or any mathematical constant, is a "constant" in a much different sense than the "constant" in the article, which ought to be called a "strikingly consistent observed value". Mathematical constants do not vary the way the value in the article is reported to.

Re:Other constants

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually pi is defined to be twice the smallest positive value for which the function (x -> 1 - x^2/2! + x^4/4! - ... + ...) becomes zero. In other words, half pi is the first zero of the cosine function.

This just happens to be the circumference of the unit circle in euclidian geometry. No, you cannot change the value of pi, not even by using non-euclidian geometry.

Re:Other constants

[fbartho]

What is this number '2' you speak of?

Re:Other constants

[2short]

Actually, Pi is the ratio of a circles circumference to it's diameter, in a euclidean space. Mathematicians extend the definitions of things beyond their typical bounds, because that's what they do. One of them may have noted that the limit of that sum was pi, and that that sum didn't depend on a euclidean space. But it didn't "just happen" to be thae ratio of the circumference of the unit circle in euclidian geometry. Rather, the fact that the sum equals pi is the whole reason mathematicians found that sum interesting in the first place. There are various other ways to derive pi as well. But the one that gets pi a greek letter to call it's own is the circle circumference/diameter one.

Amsterdam you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy smokes, that explains it... ;-D

Researchers at the Free University in Amsterdam..?

[kpainter]

Are we sure these researchers haven't been hittin' the weed a bit too much?

Sure.

[MoogMan]

This doesn't suprise me. We are the variable, trying to fit into the constants of the universe. This is why it's so hard to find "constants"...

Re:Sure.

[f1055man]

thank you thank you thank you. It's my belief that much of modern physics is no longer science, if it ever was. Every once in while we need to step back and say, "I dunno know, never will." This is not to say physics is useless or a waste of time, only that we will never be able to comprehend a system of which we are a very small part.

.002% change

[Enrique1218]

Are their instruments more precise than that? But, I found mass as an paradox when I look at it in Quantum Mechanics. We still use it in the Hamiltonian but we also rely on the electron as a dimensionless wave disturbance. Also, on a macroscopic level, we measure mass relative to other in Earth's gravity, but in Quantum Mechanics we don't factor it in because it is so small. How do we really know what the mass of the electron is. We need a more fundamental definition of what mass is before we can rely on mass ratios like mu.

Re:.002% change

[shma]

Mass is more fundamental than you imply in your statement. The mass of the electron is not found by simply 'weighing' it (measuring its gravitational force under earth's gravity), as you suggest. Of course, you know that force, any force, is related to acceleration through mass, and in the electrons case, we use mangetic force experiments to determine its mass. The force of a magnet on an electron (mass m_e) is F_B = m_e a_B = qvB, where v is the velocity of the electron perpendicular to a magnetic field of strength B.

It turns out that quantum mechanically, this results in the discrete energies of an electron in an atom to be dependent on the mass as well, through the mass to charge ration e/m. Experiments observing atomic spectra can, and have, measured this to great accuracy.

For a more fundamental defninition of what mass is, we can work it out in terms of fundamental constants, whose constancy, at least for now, has not been challenged: sqrt(h*c /G), (where h is planck's constant, c is the speed of light, and G is Newton's gravitational constant) has the units of mass, and is given the name of "the Planck mass". This can be used as a fundamental unit of mass, in the same way one lightsecond is used to define the meter (1 ls = 299 792 458 meters exactly).

Re:.002% change

[Enrique1218]

Ah yes, you use the force to describe the mass. I am familiar with those experiment. But, they relied on macroscopic force to describe mass which may be problematic when applied to a single electron and the spectra which come from the discrete energy level that arises from the Hamiltonian that assumes mass is invariant (which it probally is compared to the potential). So again, what is mass? You mention distance which in our own perception is the separation between two points. How do you phyically describe mass for an electron or even something smaller than that quarks. Granted, we hold it to be intrinsic like spin. It is a useful concept and vital part of our mathematical modeling in QM. But, why is it so important to our description of energy quanta. Does one particle know the mass of another? If so, how?

Re:.002% change

[corbettw]

Why do I suddenly have Peter Griffin saying, "Well you are a festizio. See I can make up words too, sister" in my head?

Re:.002% change

[geekoid]

" Does one particle know the mass of another? If so, how?"

By it's gravitational force?

Re:.002% change

[shimavak]

See, I still think that you're missing out, the both of you, on one of the most curious facts of all. Why is it that the inertial mass is the same as the gravitational mass?

What links the two?

I've not yet seen any satisfactory explaination for either, and I've looked, believe you me. (Not that it matters in this regard, but I have all but finished my non-research course load for my Ph.D. in Physics; therefor, I am quite familiar with the concepts and I have had a good long time to ask my questions and get no answer)

Re:.002% change

[PiMuNu]

Troll...

Re:.002% change

[shma]

I'm not sure how much of a help I can be, since I happen to be a bit behind you in my education (I start my PhD in September and I'll be where you are at this time next year). But here goes.

What m_g = m_i (called the weak equivalence principle) is telling us is that somehow gravity is more universal than other forces. In EM for instance, acceleration in an electric field E is given by a = (q/m_i) E. You can think of the q/m_i as the 'reduced charge' here. And, of course, it varies with the total charge q of the object. For gravity though, the eqn for acceleration in a gravity field is a = m_g/m_i g = g. The reduced charge is one for all objects. It's in this sense that I'm referring to universality. In fact, this universality really is the basis for General Relativity. In GR, you don't actually work with mass, but with a 4x4 matrix called the energy-momentum tensor T_{mu,nu}. If you're familiar with it, it is closely related to the idea of the Maxwell stress tensor in EM. Formally, T_{mu,nu} can be defined from an action principle. There is another, equivalent, definition, where we obtain a conservation equation through the symmetry of any system under spacetime translations. This definition is only of use for flat spacetime however. In this manner, we generalize the concept of mass even moreso than in special relativity. For a perfect fluid, for instance, T_{mu,nu} depends on energy density and PRESSURE. So if you start from general relativity, you don't really see this equivalence. Although to some extent, it's hidden in the axioms of GR, which assume that all particles 'feel' gravity in the same way, in the same sense that a = g for all particles.

If that seems like too much of a cop out to you (and I guess it is), you may have to wait until a unification of gravity and the other forces is achieved. I'm not sure how much quantum field theory you know, but you probably have heard of the electroweak theory, uniting EM and the weak force. What happens is that at a certain temperature (T_EW, for 'electroweak'), the universe undergoes a kind of phase change. At higher temperatures, the weak force carriers (the W+, W- and Z bosons) and the EM force carriers (photons) appear the same. After the phase change, the weak carriers gain mass, while the photon, as you know, remains massless (they 'freeze out', in the terminology). By studying this phase change, we learn about how the two forces are connected. Now, the fact that m_i, which is related to all forces through F=ma, is equal to m_g suggests that there is a deep relationship between gravity and the other forces. What I'm suggesting is that in order to understand this relationship, we need a theory which details the point at which gravity 'freezes out' from the other forces.

That's the best I can offer you, but hopefully if you search for Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) on arXiv.org, you'll find something more. -shma

Re:.002% change

[shimavak]

Those are all wonderful explainations, but as you said they're all somewhat axiomatic. They bring the equivalency in as an assumption; any attempt to derive that equivalence can only hope to, at best, determine if the theoretical framework is self consistant.

Don't get me wrong, that is an incredibly important test, but it will not yield new information. I think you're right about unified field theory being the key, for if we can get the mass equivalence out of it, all will be right with the world. Of course, it is possible that it is not a requisite for the universe that inertial mass and gravitational mass be equivalent, but that is even more difficult a proposition to prove!

Of course, we do not know how long it will take to get this TOE, because, as we all know...

In the beginning there was Aristotle,
And objects at rest tended to remain at rest,
And objects in motion tended to come to rest,
And soon everything was at rest,
And God saw that it was boring.

Then God created Newton,
And objects at rest tended to remain at rest,
But objects in motion tended to remain in motion,
And energy was conserved and momentum was conserved and matter was conserved,
And God saw that it was conservative.

Then God created Einstein,
And everything was relative,
And fast things became short,
And straight things became curved,
And the universe was filled with inertial frames,
And God saw that it was relatively general, but some of it was especially relative.

Then God created Bohr,
And there was the principle,
And the principle was quantum,
And all things were quantified,
But some things were still relative,
And God saw that it was confusing.

Then God was going to create Ferguson,
And Ferguson would have unified,
And he would have fielded a theory,
And all would have been one,
But it was the seventh day,
And God rested,
And objects at rest tend to remain at rest.

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a bigger issue is that ANYTHING can be compatible with string theory. Kinda like anything can be compatible with "GOD CREATED IT THIS WAY".

What I'd like to see is -negative- evidense (or at least a possibility of a disproving test).

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK... That's nice... I actually know what I'm talking about.

If we live in a multi-dimensional universe, different dimensions can grow at different rates. Such that the area of the universe which we live in has a more predominant parallel universe and thus changing the fundamental "constants" as it grows.

And by the way... String Threory is a bunch of guesses anyway. You can make it fit anything you imagine by changing it around a bit, but it still cannot predict anything in nature. String Theory (although it may be correct) is extremely overrated.

Thank you, come again.

Grue and Bleen

[spun]

Didn't they talk about Grue and Bleen in your course? That explains it at least as well as varying fundemental constants.

Re:Grue and Bleen

[whitehatlurker]

So, what I hear you saying is that no matter how many times you're eaten by a grue, you don't know that the next time your lamp dies, you'll get eaten.

Whoa, slow down cowboy - that is too radical a change in universal constants. I can accept that alpha isn't constant, but the grue always gets you ...

Re:Grue and Bleen

[spun]

Unless you use a Frobozz Magic Company Anti-Grue Kit, or their Magic Grue Repellant (which lasts all of one turn.)

Wait...

[HTL2001]

Didn't the other not-so-constant constant have something to do with light? If so the light from the quasar be affected by this?

I thought they were talking about Pi

[Aranwe Haldaloke]

Whoa, talk about a vague summary title.

I mean, what happens when you read "Fundamental Constant Possibly Inconsistent" while the big Pi icon is in plain sight right next to it?

*shudder*

Re:I thought they were talking about Pi

[aqfire]

Geez I know, and I spent the last 10 years memorizing the first 10,000 digits. If Pi was not constant, then what a waste!!!

Free University?

[Anonymous Coward]

As in beer?!

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[bill_kress]

You can't fight that argument with any type of logic. These transient "Arguments" disapear and they make up others. The arguments do not have to withstand any scrutany and just have to sound good to "Believers".

The concept of "Faith" was a magnificant and powerful creation--a tool that can allow a few people to control millions--and I'd like to meet the amazingly talented P/R man who figured out how to tag such a horrid, evil concept as "Good".

Question Everything.

So there's this atom ....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

and says ....
"I think I have lost an electron!"

Another atom asks..
"Are you sure?"

The atom says
"I'm positive!"

I'll be here all week, enjoy the veal.....

Re:So there's this atom ....

[HoboMaster]

mmmm... veal. I just love the taste of suffering.

Re:So there's this atom ....

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

So a bar walks into a man...oh wait, wrong frame of reference.

Re:So there's this atom ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Har har har

Re:So there's this atom ....

[rsadelle]

A neutron walks into a bar, orders a beer, and asks, "How much?"

The bartender says, "For you, no charge."

Re:So there's this atom ....

[seven of five]

was it a p-bar or an h-bar?

The one true constant in the universe

[DrugCheese]

is change.

confirms an old fact

[Anonymous Coward]

Constants aren't, variables won't.

What's all this talk...

[arpad1]

...about contestant's incontinence? Why would I want to know about that? That's disgusting. We should be talking about more impor....

Oh.

Never mind.

The PRL paper

[jlkelley]

For those interested in the actual paper (Phys. Rev. Lett. 96), the PDF is available on the researcher's publications page:

http://www.nat.vu.nl/~wimu/PUBS.html

Re:The PRL paper

[TMB]

Absolute measurements don't work nearly as well as relative measurements.

What they've done is compare the wavelengths at z=0 in the lab using one method and the wavelengths at z~2 in the quasar spectra using another method. They find an offset.

What would be much much more convincing is if they used one method both at low and high-z... for example, by comparing the low-z and high-z lines in the same spectrum. That's a true relative measurement, and would be be much better evidence.

[TMB]

Inconceivable!

[jrutley]

Constant: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Mind-blowing...

[fritzk3]

No, not that the constant might not be constant. What's mind-blowing is that an article posted by Zonk might actually be more than mere tripe... possibly even worth reading! Man, maybe the universe *IS* just that screwed-up!

redefining the definition of constant

[Chicken04GTO]

maybe the definition of constant should be changed from something that never changes to:

something that changes extremely slowly over the life of the universe, so slowly in fact that the species that have the intelligence to understand them will be long gone before the constants measurably change.

Basic Problem of Science

[thePig]

The basic problem of (current view of) science is that it is, definition, based on empiricism and experimentation.
Intution comes always second to both.

Problem with empricism is that we cannot ever be sure. Just because, we observed it to be true doesnt mean that it is *always* true.
But, one would guess, by the astounding success of humanity, that our theories is all quite near to the truth.

Gut *always near*, never sure.

May be, since we have amassed enough data, we should now go back to Aristotles view with Occam's Razor as a guiding stick.
Already, I see a definite direction change towards it - String theory et al.

Re:Basic Problem of Science

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic problem of (current view of) science is that it is, definition, based on empiricism and experimentation.

Think about this statement a bit, and see if you can tell how dumb it is. What is there outside what you can sense? What dose it mean to "verify?"

Re:Basic Problem of Science

[Frumious Wombat]

Politely, no.

A casual demonstration as to why not to trust your intuition comes from the early days of flight. Pilots would fly into clouds, and their intuition would tell them they're flying level, but they'd come out tilted. When instruments (the artificial horizon) were added, and they were confronted with the empirical evidence, many of them continued to trust their intuition rather than the damned instrument. Others put their intuition on hold, trusting the instruments even though they didn't feel right.

Guess which of the two sets of pilots had a greater tendency to spiral into the ground. My ex-boss who was a pilot said that when flying and unable to see the ground, "the moment you decide that you're right and the instruments are wrong you're dead". Same principle here; you may not like where the physical evidence takes you, and you may chafe at the limitations it imposes, but it's all you've got to keep you from spinning out of control.

Re:Researchers at the Free University in Amsterdam

[cpu_fusion]

They have legal shrooms there too, you know. I'd say that's more likely.

1836.15@gmail.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like I'll have to change my email address in about 7 billion years. Damn.

Book on the subject (fiction)

[whitehatlurker]

There are likely several of these out there, but The Missing Matter by Thomas R. McDonough is an interesting SciFi piece with "changing constants" and parallel universes.

A more serious article was published about a year ago on similar changes in constants.

Anthropic principle?

[peter303]

I thought this was also called the anthropic principle: intelligence and advanced carbon-water life might not be possible with constants much different than we are. Some say this implies the teleology (goal-directed universe) of intelligent design.

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[Anonymous Coward]

string theory is like a guitar, always needs tuning.

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

You definitely know what you're talking about, but you didn't read - or probably the summary was misphrased. "there's no explanation for why that ratio should be constant. If true it would provide support for string theory": in other words, if the constant is actually constant, then string theory's cool. If it's not, then we might have problems.

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[jfmiller]

Of course string theory is cnsistant with a constant mu. Any theory must be consistant with current observations. The point here is that conventional QM theory is inconsistant with a variable mu while string theory might be. This lends weight to accepting string theory as a more accurate discription of reality as it more correctly explains this observed phonominia.

JFMILLER

FORTRAN

[Detritus]

And they said that the ability to change the values of constants at run-time was a bug. Ha! Take that, you quiche eaters.

...the universe is expanding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doctor in Brooklyn: Why are you depressed, Alvy?

Alvy's Mom: Tell Dr. Flicker.

Alvy's Mom: It's something he read.

Doctor in Brooklyn: Something he read, huh?

Alvy at 9: The universe is expanding.

Doctor in Brooklyn: The universe is expanding?

Alvy at 9: Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything!

Alvy's Mom: What? Is that your business?

Alvy's Mom: He stopped doing his homework!

Alvy at 9: What's the point?

Alvy's Mom: What has the universe got to do with it? You're here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding!

Doctor in Brooklyn: It won't be expanding for billions of years yet, Alvy. And we've gotta try to enjoy ourselves while we're here!

REF

What is mass?

[wanerious]

The results are potentially interesting, though I'm initially skeptical of *any* measurement of phenomena back at this redshift claiming accuracy to some tiny fraction of a percent. And, to be picky, astronomers virtually never say that an object is "12 billion ly away" --- we usually refer to their "location" via the redshift number, as this is easy and unambiguous.

But a change in the ratio of their masses might shed some light on exactly what mass is to begin with. Yes, it's the ability to curve space, and also the resistance to being accelerated. But never mind the p/e ratio being fixed, no one really understands why the individual values are what they are to begin with.

For example, something that always gets me is the muon. Identical to the electron in virtually every way (charge, apparent point-like non-structure, lepton) except is has a mass roughly 207 times as great. Why? What does it have 207 times more of than the electron does to make it 207 times more efficient at curving space? What kind of goo is there that makes it 207 times more resistant to acceleration? And if it's truly a fundamental particle, as we suspect for leptons, why 207-point-something?

It nags at me.

Re:What is mass?

[Jtheletter]

For example, something that always gets me is the muon. Identical to the electron in virtually every way (charge, apparent point-like non-structure, lepton) except is has a mass roughly 207 times as great. Why? What does it have 207 times more of than the electron does to make it 207 times more efficient at curving space? What kind of goo is there that makes it 207 times more resistant to acceleration? And if it's truly a fundamental particle, as we suspect for leptons, why 207-point-something? It nags at me.

Man, and I thought *I* had inane shit bouncing about my head keeping me awake. You, sir, totally win. Good luck with those migraines. ;)

Re:What is mass?

[iamlucky13]

You'll have to forgive me for even trying to answer because I'm almost as confused and will probably screw it up, but I'm in the middle of Brian Green's The Incredible Universe, which is about string theory, so I feel smart today. Keep in mind this answer is in the context of string theory and I'm not sure if there is a standard quantum mechanics answer. The reason, as I understand it, is that the masses, charges, and spin states are the expression of the vibrational energy of the strings that constitute the particles. It just happens that a particular energy corresponds to the same charge, but a different mass. Of course, it's entirely possible string theory is wrong, but I'm told by people who are really good at really really really confusing math that the theory is reasonably solid so far.

Re:What is mass?

[Anonymous Coward]

People who are really good at really really really confusing math said this theory is reasonably solid

Does God exist?

[maddogsparky]

In my own experience, I have seen and heard things that are not explicable according to the accepted understanding of the world. Taking some of that experience and extrapolating to the world around me convinces me that God does exist.

How is this different then the athiest contention that everything is explicable by science? The scientific method is invariably used such that a limited observation is made and a hypothesis is formed explaining how something works. After enough limitted observations are made to "confirm" the hypothesis, the scientific comunity "believes" that the hypothesis is correct and applies it to everything else as a "law". But we all know new findings are made that invalidate old "laws" (e.g. reletivity vs newtonian).

Miracles happen, and quite often they are easily accessible to others, should they choose to challenge themselves by going to observe. Obviously, there have been many shown to be fake and others that are ambiguous. Even the Catholic church doesn't take them lightly-when pronouncing a miricle as sanctioned by the Vatican, there is a lengthly review by "independent" investigators who start off by assuming that it is a hoax.

I believe science is merely a way of explaining how God makes part of His creation function consistantly. I don't understand why He chose to do make our universe this way, but the study of the way things work (my definition of science) makes it easier to use the world around us and to prepare for future events. In the strictest sense, I am a proponent of intellegent design, but it because I find no fundamental inconsistancy with science and my religion.

Science just helps us understand how He makes things works, just like Genesis explained how the world was made to a world filled largely by farmers and nomads who didn't have the benefit of an education that included the compiled results of thousands of years of observation and analysis.

I challenge you to seek out "miracles" that have been vetted by others and are still occuring (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibles). At the least, they will be a detective story you can run down and try to solve. Then again, you may find something a little harder to explain away...

Re:Does God exist?

[mvsmo]

One main difference is that science can produce objective results, whereas religion does not. What's more, though, is that science revels in the mysteries of the universe. Religious explanations for "mircales" is throwing one's arms up in the air and admitting defeat in the face of insufficient understanding. The non-scientific person sees inexplicable things as evidence that the very fabric of the universe is inexplicable, and ergo must have links to some spiritual substance. Defaulting to a belief that everything CAN be explained (but perhaps not understood) is just the consequence of realizing that what you prescribe to a god, I could just as easily link to an intergalatic space walrus. There is no necessity for any specific type of spiritual force, and because of this there is absolutely no reason to give any particular spiritual theory merit. See, I look at genuine miracles as chances to explore in greater depth how the universe works. The spiritualist explanation offers nothing new. Not only that, it completely settles the issue by fitting this data in with what amounts to a gigantic intellectual wank session, which we call theology. It tacitly WRITES OFF the true miracle, and damn son, it actually suggests we shouldn't try to understand it more. That's the greatest insult I can think of. Of course, as a mathematician I do my fair share of intellectual wanking, but it's funny how the objects I play with have a whole of a hell lot more revelance to the universe than theories about pink unicorns ever will. The only redeeming factor of religion is that it helps some people get through life. But honestly, all it takes is a little bit of thought to come up with your own guiding principles, live a good life, and maybe, just maybe, live it with joy. So in conclusion, mysteries don't point to shit. They are just that.

Re:Does God exist?

[maddogsparky]

Of course, as a mathematician I do my fair share of intellectual wanking, but it's funny how the objects I play with have a whole of a hell lot more revelance to the universe than theories about pink unicorns ever will.

Math has as much to do with science as philosophy does with theology. In both math and philosophy, one can define certain concepts and derive truths from them. However, since you are defining the concepts, you can't test whether they are true...they ARE true because they are defined that way. If you say 8+9 is 17, it's only true because you define the underlying concepts such that they are always true. However, if someone else is counting in hexidecimal, they'd say you are wrong-but they are defining the concepts diferently.

The real world is more messy than that. That's what this article was about-just when a group of people think they have part of the universe figured out, someone else comes up with a different measurement. Mathematicians never have that problem-everything can ultimately made black and white by defining and deriving. As long as someone else uses the same definitions in the realm of math, they will get the same answer as everyone else.

See, I look at genuine miracles as chances to explore in greater depth how the universe works.

That's what I'm suggesting you do-find a miracle that has had someone with a scientific background rule out the obvious stuff that remains inexplicable by accepted scientific theories. It seems to me that most "scientists" do one of two things when encountering something they can't explain: 1) ignore it and try not to think about it, usually alluding to some undiscovered principle at work; or 2) ridicule ideas outside the mainstream of science to draw attention away from problems with applying conventional wisdom There is of course the "non-scientific" theory-a non-human intelligence or other supernatural effect may be involved.

Sometimes people in math or the hard sciences forget about human intelligence: What is intelligence? How did it come into being? How is it that I think and have feelings if all that I am is a pile of chemical reactions? Why is it so hard to apply Occam's razor to these questions?

Does it really make sense to claim there is no possiblity of an intelligence having a hand in human development when humans have had a hand in the development of other organisms (genetic engineering)? What about artifical intelligence (remember, artificial means "made by man")? If our intelligence is being applied to creating new lifeforms, how much sense does it make to rule out the possibility that intelligence may have had a hand in creating other life forms?

What about the physical universe? Many people have created their own universe: everything from comic books to science fiction, movies and now computer games, human intelligence has created domains where universal rules apply and result in complex behavior. Computer games are one of my favorite examples; bots are programmed to follow certain rules in interacting with a well-ordered environment with a bit of randomness sometimes thrown in. However, human players can influence the bots environent in large and small ways. Is there any way that you can really rule out that you are not just a bot in someone else's video game?

"Absurd!", one might say. I say, prove that you are not. If the universe does in fact have laws and everything that happens is a result of those laws, how is that different than a computer program? The computer program and the computer it runs on is designed by intelligence.

"But the universe is too big, too complex to run on a computer!" So was computational fluid dynamics a few decades ago. Now scientists have even been able to model coliding black holes and molecular interactions-stuff of science _fiction_ 30 years ago, but reality today. So why insist on rulling out a hypothesis that the same thing happens on a much larger scale?

A parting question: if God doesn't exist, why do our suroundings sometimes respond to intelligence when we can't even explain how intelligence exists in the first place?

Re:Does God exist?

[mvsmo]

However, since you are defining the concepts, you can't test whether they are true...they ARE true because they are defined that way. If you say 8+9 is 17, it's only true because you define the underlying concepts such that they are always true. However, if someone else is counting in hexidecimal, they'd say you are wrong-but they are defining the concepts diferently.

Truth is not the issue, but derivability. Mathematics differs from philosophy and theology strongly in this matter, which is why we can explore the physical universe so well using mathematics. In philosophy, there is no clear way to derive new statements or ideas.

It seems to me that most "scientists" do one of two things when encountering something they can't explain: 1) ignore it and try not to think about it, usually alluding to some undiscovered principle at work; or 2) ridicule ideas outside the mainstream of science to draw attention away from problems with applying conventional wisdom There is of course the "non-scientific" theory-a non-human intelligence or other supernatural effect may be involved.

As someone who works with scientsits, I have to say this isn't a good characterization at all. (And more, I can speak from personal experience, where even in mathematics oddness occurs). Most scientists worth their salt are basically curious and dilligent people, and so if a topic interests them sufficiently, they will pursue it.

They ignore things when it just is not interesting or broadly outside their field of experience. Only after that, if the situation is sufficiently bizarre, do they throw up their hands and "just ignore it."

The scientist doesn't accept non-scientific theories precisely because of the little reason to do so. Why should I, or anyone else, accept an idea that a) cannot be tested b) cannot be reproduced and c) starts with incredible, entirely arbitrary assumptions? This is, contrary to what your sig says, what keenly separates mathematical sciences from any religion.

Sometimes people in math or the hard sciences forget about human intelligence: What is intelligence? How did it come into being? How is it that I think and have feelings if all that I am is a pile of chemical reactions?

Yet it is from hard science that we know so much about human intelligence, so no, I do not think they forget about them. What a lot of them are, though, are materialists.

Human intelligence is always brought up as being some great, unique, and mystifying thing. The awe though is not in the seeming stupifying complexity of any sentient being, but the physiology of it all. With greater understanding of exactly how the brain works really comes more appreciation, than just effectively tossing the question out as inexplicable and then creating a religion behind it.

Look at how our understanding of celestial mechanics evolved. At first maybe we thought the stars and planets were pushed around by some giant being of power. Eventually we had Newtonian mechanics and general relativity. For simple things like, say, orbits, it really isn't so mystifying how it works. I think one would be hard pressed to find an educated person that saw the movement of the stars these days as reason to consider spiritual forces necessarily present.

I guess what I am saying is human thought is in the same category, just a bit more complex than simple planetary revolution.

So why insist on rulling out a hypothesis that the same thing happens on a much larger scale?

I wouldn't call your hypothesis absurd at all, just strongly unncessary, and hence largely irrelevant. What we observe about the universe points to one thing only, really: the universe obeys laws. It certainly doesn't suggest we are in someone's computer program. That is a huge leap, and begs a whole lot of questions.

More importantly, it doesn't matter even if we were in a giant computer program, since we can only observe the physical universe with

Re:Does God exist?

[maddogsparky]

Now let's say a person performed a real honest to god miracle. Like concentrating hard enough and causing some logs to burst into flame. A reductionist says, "Wow, there is probably some direct connection between all forms of matter such that a human can manipulate matter outside of their own body. Maybe I'll write my physics Ph.D exploring this concept."

It is interesting how when people put the flame wars aside and start constructing logical arguments, well-thought out religion and science have a lot in common. I say well-thought out because some denominations, such as Catholicism, use logical reasoning to construct their belief structure. At the core of this structure is a set of observations and the belief structure must be internally consistant. Almost 2000 years of some of the finest thinkers in the world has found the Catholic and Orthodox churches in a position such that, their belief structures are quite consistent within itself and with its core tenents, arguably more-so than some branches of main-stream science.

Of course both the realms of science and religion has people that are adherants to ideas with inherent flaws, although sometimes they are merely elaborate belief structures derived (sometimes loosely) from some untestable tenents. But I don't think the value of a whole catagory of thought such as science or religion should be judged based on the ravings of a few fringe individuals or adherents who misapply facts and reason.

One of the main reasons why I am still a Roman Catholic is that I haven't been able to find any cases where, at its heart, there are inherent conflicts within church doctrine. In this regard, the largest distinction between it and main-stream science is not the validity of its reasoning, but the core tenents themselves.

I understand your desire as a reductionist to want everything to be testable; unfortunately, nothing in the physical world really is testable. All the observations we make ultimately rely on ours senses, including those relayed to us by others.

Essentially the belief structure of an atheist who understands and follows science is that they believe the majority of the knowledge they accumulate from their senses, and it all has to fit together. Any new experiences (such as magnetism being introduced to a child) often result in a sense of wonder and curiosity about how it "works".

My argument is that most people of a "rational" religion have the same internalized values. The difference in some regard is to where the reduction stops. In some ways, it boils down to intent. If my son asks me why a program I write performs a given task, there are two ways to answer his question. One is by describing things such as programming, operating systems, computer hardware, electricity, etc. The other is to state my intent, i.e. I wanted the program to do what it does.

Which is the better answer? It depends on whether he cared about what I wanted or if he just wanted to understand the mechanics of it. Could I change the mechanics of it? Sure, and then it would have required him to change his understanding of how the program worked.

Fundamentally, I believe the main difference between religion and science is about whether the question is being asked in a mechanical sense or in an intent sense. Miracles to me are sortof like my son witnessing a change in a program after he already understands what the program does. He can theoretically figure out _how_ the program changed, given the right tools and knowlege, but that would not answer _why_ it changed (something like the changing physical constants that started this discussion).

I could confound my son by temporarily changing the program to produce a change in its output, then changing the program back to its original state; even if he had the right tools to understand how the program worked, he would not be able to explain the deviation in output unless I told him or he witnessed the action. Even so, he would still not know _why_ the program was ch

Just a little bit of precedent

[trigonalmayhem]

Remember when the force of gravity was a constant?

Well for simple calculations about things on the earth's surface it still is, but as soon as you widen your perspective a little bit you have to start reworking where that number comes from. I don't see how this is much different than that. They look a little further and realize another 'constant' can also vary based on some principle they will hopefully figure out later with more observation.

Amsterdam?

[Sebilrazen]

"Researchers at the Free University in Amsterdam in the Netherlands"

Constants aren't constants? What are these guys smoking?

Constant?...sounds like a Global Variable

[CaptainPinko]

To me it sounds like these values aren't actually constants but more like global variables. No matter where you are, at any one time the value is the same. So it is constant with respect to position, motion, etc. However, across time the value can change... but it will change universally so that it remains "constant" (in the sense that I mentioned before hand).

Of course this is unfortunate because this means any sufficiently sophisticated simulator will require global variables to run. Dijkstra will be aghast when in the future it is discovered that the universe requires "goto"s too!

Re:Constant?...sounds like a Global Variable

[yeremein]

No matter where you are, at any one time the value is the same.

The concept of "any one time no matter where you are" is inconsistent with general relativity. Granted, GR has not been reconciled with quantum mechanics, but on the scale of galaxies Einstein still hasn't been proven wrong.

Re:Constant?...sounds like a Global Variable

[hackstraw]

Dijkstra will be aghast when in the future it is discovered that the universe requires "goto"s too!

In the future, you will probably need setjmp() followed by longjmp().

Oh...

[pedalman]

I see. You said, "constant".

I thought you said, "constipate".

Informative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell is parent modded informative? That's an insightful comment if I've ever seen one.

The universe is too low level to have strings

[T-Ranger]

If anything, it has only implemented arrays of char.

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[aqfire]

I question your logic on that one.

Ten Minutes to Wapner

[Valdrax]

This is actually true, I do know the first 100 digits by heart.

Out of curiosity, are you an excellent driver?

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[The Good Reverend]

Well of course, that goes without saying...

Doesn't it?

Re:The Quiet Earth DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

The Quiet Earth DVD
Amazon says: "This title will be released on June 13, 2006. "
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EZ908Y/qid=11 45646188/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-4912561-5467248?s=d vd&v=glance&n=130

mininova pwns netflix

[crabpeople]

once again

http://www.mininova.org/tor/130051

Re:mininova pwns netflix

[CableModemSniper]

Mmm, I love it when slashdot slashdots a torrent.

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[gstoddart]

I think a bigger issue is that ANYTHING can be compatible with string theory.

This isn't even remotely correct. The easiest way to see this is to consider bosonic string theory and look at the manner in which the Virasoro algebra constrains physical states. It most certainly does not allow anything to be true. Quite the opposite in fact, it places heavy constraints on what is and is not allowed in a consistent string theory.

You know, every time we have one of these threads, someone always posts something like the above.

And I'm never sure if he's right, or having us on -- you know, like telling me my fleezle needs to be defrobulated or something.

I mean, it sounds cool and all, but it's all just so much gibbersih to a layperson. :-P

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[iamlucky13]

First of all, to stay a little bit on topic, the theoretically observed change in mu is extremely small. Physicists don't know why mu should be about 1836 instead of about 1836.5 or 3 or 11,296,428. My understanding is (and I am not an expert on this), that really small change in mu like we're talking about here wouldn't significantly affect the universe and it would still look largely like it does, but somewhat small change in mu, like an order of magnitude would, a lot. This bugs physicists because they don't know why it is what it is. Why do we have the universe we have instead of something drastically different like one that collapsed or blew apart 10 minutes after the Big Bang? The only answer they can offer is the anthropic principle: It is the way it is because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here to notice.

The existence of God does not hinge on the constancy of mu. This doesn't even disprove intelligent design, which is as bad from a theological perspective as it is from a scientific perspective, being vain in both schools. Several prominent Catholic theologians have stated as much. The perplexing question of why fundamental particles are the way they are and therefore allow us to exist does not constitute a proof of God's existence, but they are rather suggestive.

For the record, I think a brief discussion of creation concepts would be appropriate in social studies (as part of a survey of religions) or in philosophy classes (the study of being) in public schools, but not in science. I want to point out that if God created the phenomena which allows and upon which we base our science, it's unlikely that we would be able to prove or disprove His existence directly through science.

The concept of "Faith" was a magnificant and powerful creation--a tool that can allow a few people to control millions--and I'd like to meet the amazingly talented P/R man who figured out how to tag such a horrid, evil concept as "Good".

Question Everything

I wasn't going to reply, but it seemed worthwhile to Question this statement. Who is controlled here? The billions of faithful who find meaning in life? In what way are we controlled? By adherence to principles that are conducive to the betterment of mankind like "love your neighbor as yourself" and "Thou shalt not kill?" What is the gain for these scheming, evil leaders and their P/R man? You don't exactly see a lot of priests pimping it up with 22" rims on their Lincolns and an escort on each arm. Celibacy, the difficulties of working with a faith-community, itchy robes, and a badly off-key choir...now there's a good reason to cook up a religion. I'm willing to guarantee you the overwhelming majority of religious leaders really do believe in the faith they profess. Yes there is a large degree of misdirection and a few unscrupulous groups that are nothing more than pyramid schemes or printing companies, but the basic precepts of most religions out there are founded, promoted, and executed with good intent.

I know them all

[geekoid]

arctan(1/F2n)= arctan(1/F2n + 1)+ arctan(1/F2n + 2)

Re:I know them all

[aqfire]

Ok smarty, what's the digit at position infinity? Hey, it keeps changing... ;P

Re:I know them all

[geekoid]

it is 5. give or take up to 4

Re:I know them all

[aqfire]

I'm curious, why is it that you get a score of 2 for every post you make, while i get a score of 1? Do moderators do that, or is it a result of karma?

Re:Making fun of theories

[dvicci]

You *should* wonder about the theory of evolution. It's that wonder, that curiosity, that questioning that leads to more answers, which lead to more questions, and on and on. Science is (obviously) not a constant in and of itself, but an evolving (heh) craft owing as much to chance, happenstance and luck as to true brilliance.

Many things have been held to be true, that have since been proven false. That doesn't mean that the time spent on those theories and ideas was pointless or useless... if you can see it all as an evolving body of work that generally moves towards a more accurate understanding of the way things work.

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[account_deleted]

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connection to Pi

[jrvz]

When I started graduate school in physics, the proton to electron mass ratio was 6*pi^5, to within the experimental error. By the time I left, they had refined the ratio and 6*pi^5 was no longer within the experimental error. I had not checked recently.

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[account_deleted]

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I didn't realize cosmotologists were so smart

[BT224]

All mine ever talks about is how hot/cold/rainy it is. :)

there is a good reason to exclude it from "fund.."

[mapkinase]

Let us check:

First trying Universal:

        There is proton/electron mass ratio.

Let us try to look for the dime not under the street lamp but where it belongs: in the gutter (
Atomic and nuclear constants): here it is, among 151 constants in total.

C'mon. 151 fundamental constants only in atomic-nuclear section?

Re:Making fun of theories

[robertjw]

Many things have been held to be true, that have since been proven false. That doesn't mean that the time spent on those theories and ideas was pointless or useless... if you can see it all as an evolving body of work that generally moves towards a more accurate understanding of the way things work.

In spite of my rather obvious attempt at a troll, I do agree. I just wish your ideas were more prevelent.

A = B != B = A

[Dire Bonobo]

> String theory is fully compatible with the idea that the constants in nature are actually constant.

It's also, presumably, compatible with the idea that the constants in nature are not constant. If that's the case, then non-constant constants provides trouble for some other theories but not for string theory, making it more likely that string theory is correct.

Basically, you're making an incorrect logical argument. The article is saying...

if (non-const) then (string theory)

...you're taking this to mean...

if (string theory) then (non-const)

...which does not follow. It's the ol' "if A implies B then B implies A" error.

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Oh, ok. Sorry.

Interesting question!

[maillemaker]

I'm wondering the same thing myself.

Maybe, in fact, the laws of physics are in a state of flux, and, perhaps, have been since the beginning of time. Perhaps the change was rapid in the first billionths of a second of the birth of the universe, and since then the rate of change has been growing slower and slower as the universe expands?

Perhaps the things we have assumed are constant merely /seem/ constant because they change so slowly?

Steve

One idea...

[swelke]

I'm not motivated enough to actually read the article yet, but...

One explanation for the inconsistency is special relativity. As moving particles approach the speed of light, their mass increases. It's an exponential process, so the closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass increase you get for an incremental velocity increase. For atoms at rest, the protons are effectively stationary, but the electrons are actually moving pretty fast (the difference between an electron's rest mass and it's mass when in an orbital of an atom is just barely significant). Since the extra velocity from a quasar is just added to the rest velocity (I think), protons and electrons should gain slightly different amounts of mass.

Does anybody disagree? Did anybody even follow what I just said?

Re:One idea...

[swelke]

Okay, I know it's lame to reply to myself, but I just read the article.

First: A difference of 0.002% is most often noise, particularly in astronomical measurements where a difference of 300% can sometimes be written off (correctly) to statistical abberations.

Second: If the observed difference is indeed correct, it doesn't mean that a fundamental constant has changed. Since the change is a reduction, my above explanation of special relativity making up the difference just might work. Electrons move faster than protons, so they get boosted to a higher velocity. Higher final velocity means more increase in mass. If the electrons get more increase in mass than the protons, then the difference between the two decreases (it takes marginally fewer electrons to mass the same as a proton).

From here I found an electron orbital velocity of about 2*10^6m/s (hope they're correct.) This page gives a quasar velocity of 0.367C (possibly a different quasar, but it should be good enough for order-of-magnitude calculations). Using these two, I get a rest mass 1.075 times normal for protons, and one of 1.078 times normal for electrons in atoms. This is a difference of 0.3%, about 150 times as much difference as that reported in the article.

Now I could really use comments from anybody who followed this. As far as I can figure it, either a difference in kinetic mass is what's being measured, in which case they measured far too small of a value, or gravitational mass is used, in which case there should be no difference (as gravitational mass is unaffected by special relativity).

Or maybe I'm off in my own little world and the string theory kooks are right.

Could someone enlighten me?

[Spaceburger]

I see no connection between this and String theory. And speking of said theory, could someone enlighten me as to what use it has had so far? I have an layman's/engineer's interest in theoretical physics, and I have yet to see a clear summary of how the theory agrees/disagrees with QM and relativity, and whether it is at least capable of duplicating current results. P.S. Please, something beyond the "strings vibrate in N dimensions".

The hobgoblin of small minds

[Anonymous Coward]

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
            - B.Franklin

Re:The hobgoblin of small minds

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, but you're quoting a guy that believes in hobgoblins...

Re:The hobgoblin of small minds

[Inthewire]

Or, more accurately, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

the Buddhists solved it first

[xmp_phrack]

and Joshu said MU!

Jesus is King. Jesus is a CONSTANT

[marlinSpike]

So called Science is crap and always being revised. Meanwhile, the Lord Jesus is a Constant. The comparison is stark -- choose the relative ignorance of shifting goal posts, or choose JESUS, who SAVES, and is ONE GOD, FOR EVER AND EVER. AMEN!!

Re:Jesus is King. Jesus is a CONSTANT

[marlinSpike]

PLEASE IGNORE!!! The last post was a stupid joke from a friend sent from my laptop. URGH!!! Why did I forget to lock my computer?!

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[swelke]

String theory is fully compatible with the idea that the constants in nature are actually constant.

I suppose that depends on which version of string theory you're using. There are quite a few of them.

I have an observation

[iXiXi]

If there were true constants in nature, wouldn't there be true identical items in existance? How many truly identical items have you ever come across? It is understood that outside factors cause variations in the development of items in nature. I can't measure the submicroscopics of gasses 12 billion light years away. They didn't teach me that in college. I think that there is a lot of assumption based on theory here that injects a exponential margin for chaotic error. It has already been proven that math does not translate to the real world. To wax philosophical, when do you ever have 2 quarks? The very idea that there are 2 different quarks establishes them with enough difference to make them unique. Therefore, they are different. Hell, the thoughts that I just had in my head changed some part of my brain chemistry while writing this little pointless reply, nothing stays the same and nothing was ever how you thought it was a millisecond before or after you decided it was as it was. Phase space is a dance, dimensions are a dream, fact is opinion based on acceptance and I am stuck in the middle. Those who desire to find scientific explanation for chaos are attempting to murder it.

Ob. Simpsons

[iamlucky13]

At the "Annual Big Science Thingy"

Scientists (in white lab coats) talking
Prof Frink: Uh, excuse me. I mean could I have your atten...would everybody please...
Talking continues
Prof Frink: It's time to get this...oh gliben. PI IS EXACTLY 3!
*Stunned silence*
Prof Frink: I'm sorry I had to resort to this.

Also reminds me how my calculus professor used to joke, "What do you mean pi is irrational? It's the ratio of C to D."

An alternate universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about y'all, but if Spock has a beard, I'm leaving on the next string.

Oops... almost forgot!

[tomcres]

We're fucked!
...
PROFIT!

Hmm???

[Pixelmixer]

Fundamental constants are constant only when e=mc^x where is 2. BUT, if fundamental constants aren't always constant than e=mc^x where x would be 15. Staggeringly enough cosmotologists are quite constantly requiring several levels of education in the physics demographic where the ratio of a proton's mass to that of an electron. Although electrons are relative to space/time, they have no meaning whatsoever within this post. The ratio of a persons mass to that of an electoral's is quite overwlemingly staggeringly different when compared to that of the average single white godfearing spiderfearing arachnophobe. Although Spiders are relatively small, they are enormously titanic relative to atoms and those minature beings called protons, neutrons and electroscopes.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack: me...im dishonest and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest...honestly its the honest ones you have to watch out for...cuz you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly....stupid

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[master_p]

The first part of your post is good...but the second one about faith leaves a lot to be desired.

The billions of faithful who find meaning in life?

Actually no one finds meaning in life from religion...because religion dictates that this life is just a test for the afterlife. People usually find meaning in life when they get rid of religions, i.e superstitions, witchcraft and the like.

In what way are we controlled?

Religion makes people pathetic command receptors. They await like sheep for an order from their master.

If people were not controlled by religion, no one would be able to start a war "in the name of God".

If people were not controlled by religion, we would not have billions of people starving while the government officials live a luxurious life.

If people were not controlled by religion, they would listen to the calls of nature and be much more free in making love. It is sad to see young people being reluctant to open themselves to the pleasures of their body just because someone told them it is a sin...and love is liberating, and only with true love one can be emotional enough to love him/herself and the world around her.

By adherence to principles that are conducive to the betterment of mankind like "love your neighbor as yourself" and "Thou shalt not kill?"

But these principles work only because people fear hell. Take away the fear of hell, and then you will see that under the hood, people are still savages. It would be much better if people really understood and embrace those principles because they wanted to, not because they fear punishment if they do not.

What is the gain for these scheming, evil leaders and their P/R man?

The gain is the majority of people are sheep that happily accept to live a shitty life, while they enjoy all the goods this planet has to offer, and then more.

You don't exactly see a lot of priests pimping it up with 22" rims on their Lincolns and an escort on each arm.

What these people do, they do it in private. Most rich people live daily with cocaine, drug and sex orgies, they are pedophiles and perverts. Especially the top officials of religions, together with politicians and other groups of people. How many cases of child abuse by Catholics would you want to be persuaded?

Of course the Pope and other church's leaders are actually going around in Lincolns!

Celibacy, the difficulties of working with a faith-community, itchy robes, and a badly off-key choir...now there's a good reason to cook up a religion.

The lower rank priests are the heros of our society...but these people would be good even if religions did not exist.

I'm willing to guarantee you the overwhelming majority of religious leaders really do believe in the faith they profess.

Judging from what they have done in the past (conspired with Hitler, for example), I really have to say you do not have a clue.

That's some impressive accuracy there, eh?

[janeil]

Can these guys really be that good and sure of their measurements? Spectrum from that far away can be measured to one part in 50,000 with exactitude? If so, that is amazing stuff, and of course I'm all for multiple realities! It is a little bit of a letdown, though, to read "fundamental constant changes!" and then find the chance is .002% over 12 billion years. "Oh no! A proton isn't 1836 times as heavy as an electron, it's really 1836.03672 times as heavy! Aaaiieeeee! God help us all!"

The quiet earth

[MichaelSmith]

best.....nz.....movie.....ever

But not very popular. Maybe Peter Jackson could be pursuaded to remake it.

The book was pretty good in a academic kind of way. Not really SF like the film was.

Re:The quiet earth

[Dabido]

'Plot Outline: A mans awakens to find himself alone in the world.'

Happens to me every morning!

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[bill_kress]

I wasn't going to reply, but it seemed worthwhile to Question this statement. Who is controlled here?

Who is being controlled by faith??? Are you seriously asking?

Okay, Let's see...

Terrorists seeking virgins in the afterlife.
Christians voting for Bush.
Christians bombing abortion clinics and/or murdering abortion doctors.
Any religious followers donating to these filthy-rich preachers.
Catholics agreeing to avoid birth control.
Catholic priests avoiding sex (added by the church so they wouldn't leave churches they had built to their heirs, a common problem a while ago)
The "Holy Wars"
The Spanish Inquisition
Government abuses (Have faith in your government)

I know you think I'm being broad, but Faith is a very broad concept. If you accept what someone else tells you without questioning it, you are leaving yourself open to all the above.

Faith is an EVIL idea, it's simply a way of hiding what you are doing behind a shroud. It is necessary in religion because there is nothing going on behind the shroud--there is no "Real World" proof of anything, so they say "Have faith" in order to validate any of it.

Letting a concept like Faith into your life also lets in all those other examples because people stop challenging things they are fed. For instance: the bible has a million contradictions, some extremely obvious, some a little more subtle. Faith requires that there are no contradictions. Every time you force these contradictions to "Work" in your mind, you are breaking your brain a little, making it easier for external forces to manipulate it. It's a long process, but it's going on en mass across the world.

Oh, and I'm also a little beyond beliving the whole "It's harmless because he only preaches don't hurt thy neighbor", this Bible is full of horrible stuff, like God telling "His People" to murder "the littl ones of every city" of his enemy.

If you ARE going to believe as a Christian, at least suck it up and face the fact that this is one nasty fellow you're following. Don't let them tell you to take on "faith" that he's all about goodness and light. This god asked for burnt offerings and told you to stone to death your newly married daughter for the crime of not being a virgin.

And don't give me that BS about "Christ put in a good word for us and fixed it" because these things are exactly what god wanted at one point, so that IS what god wants (or are you saying he was just cranky and grew out of it? He decided that the things he asked for were not such a good idea after all? AN OMNISCENT BEING DOESN'T CHANGE HIS OPINION BECAUSE HE KNEW ABOUT FUTURE FACTORS ALL ALONG!)

0.002%???

[phlegmofdiscontent]

How the hell did they get that kind of accuracy out of quasars? Incidentally, I wouldn't consider the ratio of the masses of two particles (one of which is a composite) as a fundamental constant, not like the speed of light or the fine structure constant.

Four dimensions

[el_jake]

1. x
2. y
3. z
4. profit!

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is (and I am not an expert on this), that really small change in mu like we're talking about here wouldn't significantly affect the universe

It probably would. The relative difference in mass between proton and neutron is extremely small, just over 0.1%. It is so small that the binding energy in atomic nuclei is greater than this difference. Only because of that can neutrons be stable in (some) nuclei, and without stable neutrons there would be no atoms except hydrogen. Disturb this balance only a little bit and everything breaks. Not even stars would ignite, it would be a very dull universe indeed.

The perplexing question of why fundamental particles are the way they are and therefore allow us to exist does not constitute a proof of God's existence, but they are rather suggestive.

Err, no, they aren't. Assume there are many universes that differ in fundamental constants. Or assume that there is only one universe, but fundamental constants can change locally. We wouldn't know anything about the inaccessible parts that aren't conductive to life. The only thing we can infer from the fact that we are here is that it is possible for us to be here, which suggests... well, it suggest that we are here. But we already knew that.

And by the way, I'm not entirely convinced that the crusades made the world a better place.

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[account_deleted]

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Picture a world without religion

[shadow_slicer]

A world without religion.
A world where lazy people still believe whatever tells them.
A world where leaders can still start a war arbitrarily, citing security or nationalism.
A world where people still starve while some are still hungry.
A world where people still feel restricted in their actions over concern for what society thinks.

Hello new world, same as the old world....

Your problem is not with religion.
Your problem is with hypocracy, laziness, greed and many other evils.
Religion by itself is neither good nor evil.

Re:Picture a world without religion

[vertinox]

Religion by itself is neither good nor evil.

Neither are atomic bombs.

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[strikethree]

What is the gain for these scheming, evil leaders and their P/R man?

Power. Power is a means to an end... and it is the end itself. *shrug*

strike

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that you're upset or angry about money-grabbing, power-hungry, crusading organized religions. Fair enough. But there are some religions where there's no Hell, no Heaven, no deity, no Devil, and we work to improve ourselves and humanity. And definitely no crusades or martyrs - that's a feature of many religions, but most people consider it symbolic, historic or mythological. Perhaps you'd enjoy a peaceful religion?

I'm a Buddhist. It gives me the peace and strength to work hard for a better life. It's not an identity, just a philosophy and practice that's working for me at the moment. I don't get executed if I change my mind. No Heaven or Hell. (There's a thing sort of like Heaven, a sort of stairway to Nirvana with progressively less consciousness, but I think I'll worry about that when I get there. Or rather, I won't.) No deities (unless you happen to worship Buddha or Quan Yin - rare, but some do). No devils, demons or evil force. No crusades.

The only thing you might have a point about in my case is sex. However, hinduism and (I think also) taoism have sex cults if that's what you want (surely you've heard of tantric yoga? Those people who live for 400 years in the himalayas by having lots of athletic sex every day?) Personally, I enjoy a high quality of life more than I enjoy alcohol, cigarettes, onions, and bad casual sex.

Consider researching humanism, which is based on the idea that religion fills a little gap in our psyche. They have created some interesting ceremonies to help direct our spiritual connection to special events. Then pick up one of those little books on Buddha or Quan Yin meditation next time you see one. You're not expected to believe it all - just to find some benefit from anything you like.

bah

[flogic42]

There are other possible explanations of the distorted spectra. I don't know what intervening matter has refracted and contributed to gravitational red shift / blue shift. Unless they see the same pattern over many ultradistant quasars it doesn't amount to much.

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it OK to have faith in OTHER religious concepts? Like, say, "I have a soul. Life is worth living. I should make the world a better place or at least not stuff it up." Ethics, peace, community, that sort of thing?

Is it OK to CHOOSE to have faith, or not, in a particular concept, based on a rational consideration of its worth, rather than following orders from Leader?

Because even many Christians do that, and many other people are not Christians but have plenty of faith. Also, Christianity is often a social club that substitutes for the effort of maintaining a difficult faith.

(Yes, a difficult faith that says take care of the poor, don't be rich, don't be selfish, don't fight wars, don't kill, keep religion and politics separate, and even "turn the other cheek" to anyone who insists on hitting you.)

I think /. agrees, because my mystery word is "condom".

I always wondered ...

[PPH]

...what that extra knob on my TV set did.

Think with your brain, not with your heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Actually no one finds meaning in life from religion...because religion dictates that this life is just a test for the afterlife. People usually find meaning in life when they get rid of religions, i.e superstitions, witchcraft and the like.

Which religion? Not all religions *have* an afterlife. You're thinking with your feelings here, not your brain, and your arguments are completely inconsistant with each other. Moreover, you limit your definition of "religion" to those events which make easy targets or examples, then pretend it applies to all religions.

That's like going from "I can establish that you are ignorant of the following things" and generalizing to "all atheists are ignorant." That conclusion does not follow from those premises. Moreover, even if I could establish that all atheists are ignorant, I could *not* do so from merely that premise. Insisting that the conclusion is valid, even with a truckload of quotes and documented evidence, would NOT establish that that logic was valid. You can't get there from here; at least, not on that road.

> Religion makes people pathetic command receptors. They await like sheep for an order from their master.

Even assuming as much of your point as I can for the sake of argument, this observation is faulty because it contains a self-selected sample. E.G. it would be those who are like that who are drawn by having someone make decisions for them. Don't confuse correlation with causation. And even there, I would still dispute the correlation as well, but perhaps some other time.

> If people were not controlled by religion, we would not have billions of people starving while the government officials live a luxurious life.

Umm, like we HAD happen in China during Mao's reign? He was an atheist and China's government is atheist, even today. You MUST be a Communist Party member to hold any non-local political office. Religion is inconsistant with Party membership.

Do you even know how many people starved during Mao's "Great Leap Forward"!? Not to mention all those who died for other reasons...

> If people were not controlled by religion, they would listen to the calls of nature and be much more free in making love. It is sad to see young people being reluctant to open themselves to the pleasures of their body just because someone told them it is a sin...and love is liberating, and only with true love one can be emotional enough to love him/herself and the world around her.

Not applicable to all religions. Perhaps you've heard of the Kama Sutra? It's a religious book, believe it or not, from a Hindu sect. Or perhaps you'd prefer to turn to the Song of Solomon (also called the Song of Songs) in the Bible?

>> By adherence to principles that are conducive to the betterment of mankind like "love your neighbor as yourself" and "Thou shalt not kill?"

> But these principles work only because people fear hell. Take away the fear of hell, and then you will see that under the hood, people are still savages. It would be much better if people really understood and embrace those principles because they wanted to, not because they fear punishment if they do not.

While I believe in Hell, I know for a fact that I am not controlled by any such thing--I do what I believe is right BECAUSE I believe it is right. Furthermore, this is inconsistant with your previous assertion, that things would get BETTER without religion. From this premise, according to you, people would stop obeying these directives (e.g. start killing) if they believed they could get away with it...

> What these people do, they do it in private. Most rich people live daily with cocaine, drug and sex orgies, they are pedophiles and perverts.

Just how many rich folks do you know, anyhow? I'm just... curious...

moving parts

[Dr.Ruud]

Because protons contain moving parts, its mass changes all the time.

I had a girlfriend like that.

[Poromenos1]

It's true, I had to show her where it was.

Re:I had a girlfriend like that.

[wwahammy]

Okay I thought I was only one who had a girlfriend like that.

burned by religion, burned by science

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

I think most of the fanatical arguments on both sides come from people who have been burned by the other side.

The most vocal arguments on both sides, however, come from a very few people trying to play power games with the philosophies they claim are implicit in their side.

I thinkk it's the power mongers that the rest of the fanatics are trying to stop.

faith and good

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Well, there is definitely an evil version of faith and an evil version of good that has been invented by someone evil.

More than likely more than one of each. But we can blame the devil for starting it all be pretending to be God instend of being just god like the rest of us.

The real God says, "Question Everything."

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

The fake demigods are the ones who tell you not to question what they tell you, only what the other guy says.

Re:The real God says, "Question Everything."

[bill_kress]

How does God tell us anything? Have you talked to him?

As for what you can really observe, the bible is the word of god is it not?

Where in the bible does it say to question anything? Also, if you are questioning everything, how do you know the bible is the word of god?

In fact, the bible was written by humans and the books were selected by a power-hungry church. The sections chosen were chosen specifically because they had the least conflicts and supported the church the most.

I don't really worry about weather or not those people had their hand guided by God. Maybe, maybe not. If you claim that their hands were guided by god (and therefore the bible was written by god/is his direct word) then you start to take a LOT on faith, and as I said, I don't do that--I question everything.

Ps. They just found the book of Judas. It was excluded by the church because it conflicted a couple other books and was called heresy for a long period where it's thought that every copy was burned (Yes, this is how the church chose what goes into the bible and what didn't). It covered Judas being Jesus' best friend--closer than any of the other apostles--and Jesus asked him to betray him. It's not completely validated, but it was from the right age.

3.5 sigma effect

[Al Clocker]

The claim is (Delta mu) / (mu) = (1.98±0.58)×10-5, a 3.5 sigma effect. Anyone in this business would be extremely careful before claiming that it is inconsistent with zero, i.e. no change at all. There are many experiments checking for things like this, and most of them never get popular attention, because they're consistent with known physics.

This result is likely to be proven wrong in the future.

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[woolio]

ut the basic precepts of most religions out there are founded, promoted, and executed with good intent. I belive so too. Which is what makes these groups the most destructive force ever created. Yes, they often do a lot of good. But misguided good intentions are far more destructive than intentionally destructive actions. These groups, fueled by good intentions, sometimes (indirectly) push their faith on others. I doubt even the innocent religious charities do not work without an angle. And I find it quite funny that churches will have multi-million dollar fundraisers to build a new building when the old one seems to serve its purpose and in the same mass, have a separate collection for the disadvantaged.

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[mOdQuArK!]

I remember listening to some guy on NPR talking about the various differences between religions (he had studied as many as he could "scientifically").

One of the interesting comments that he made is that most of the "unorganized" pagan religions didn't really have the concept of "faith" - you either believed the stuff, or you didn't, or you believed variations or something else, but whatever interpretation you made of it was made completely by yourself in relation to how you experienced your life.

"Faith" is a concept that was almost exclusively introduced by "organized" religion, whenever you had some sort of elite/authority who wanted the general populace to follow a set of rules without having to police them all the time (especially since then you would have to police the police, etc).

By introducing Faith as a required part of any religion, people feel _guilty_ when they break your rules, and they get angry when they see other people breaking the rules (same reaction as when you see someone breaking the rules in a game). As a spiritual leader, you get the bonus of having people enforce rules on themselves, and on others, without you having to lift a finger.

Anyway, one of his main points was that every organized major religion in the world ended up adding "Faith" as one of their key tenets when each religion evolved to the point where they had some kind of elite who wanted to influence the followers of that religion.

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[island01]

Err, no, they aren't. Assume there are many universes that differ in fundamental constants. Or assume that there is only one universe, but fundamental constants can change locally.

THIS IS YOUR REBUTTAL?!?!!! Assume this, maybe that?

Give me a freaking break.

The perplexing question of why fundamental particles are the way they are and therefore allow us to exist does not constitute a proof of God's existence, but they are rather suggestive.

Evidence that we're not here by accident can only mean that there is some natural physical need for us to be here... without making an unfounded leap of faith.

*geez*

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[vertinox]

Yes there is a large degree of misdirection and a few unscrupulous groups that are nothing more than pyramid schemes or printing companies, but the basic precepts of most religions out there are founded, promoted, and executed with good intent.

Explain the crusades, inquisitions, the protestant vs Catholic civil wars throughout history.

Not the mention the whole sale slaughter of the indiginous people's throughout history.

Yeah... They have good intentions, but they don't care if it means if they have to pave the road to hell in the souls of the saved.

The reason why they do this is not for money or power... But because they want to be right.

They are afraid to be wrong. So the world must agree with them.

(This doesn't apply to just Christians, but to any religion or ideology that wanted to make everyone believe in their message)

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[internic]

And a much better reply would have pointed to some authoritative source or would have stated why one should believe you know what you're talking about. Even as a physicist (who works outside of elementary particle theory) I've never heard of the Virasoro algebra.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[internic]

Thanks.

That's maybe a little more than was necessary. My point was mostly that Slashdot (like many places) has plenty of people who claim to know about something but actually know little. So, if you do know something, it's good to back up your claims a bit so readers can distinguish signal from noise. I guess in the end it's little different from why we use references in scientific journals.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Provides evidence for string theory?

[internic]

Yes, there's that and also the fact that it seems like the probability that a comment will be modded up decreased exponentially with a half-life of about 30 minutes after a story is posted. But for each one of the ignorant loud-mouths there are probably a lot of people who are quitely reading your posts and learning from them. And many have probably done what I just did and marked you as a "friend" so they will see your comments in the future.

God's voice is your conscience

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Sorry about being slow on the uptake, been out of the loop -- job hunt and such.

I know that power-mongers have abused religion throughout human history. They have also abused science. Power-mongers will abuse anything they can. They even try to abuse the human conscience. Unfortunately, they sort-of succeed at that sometimes, which is why governments which fail to recognize and encourage freedom are evil.

However, the existence of snake-oil salesmen and other fakirs aside, conscience does exist, and there is a being/principle that created the universe and still rules it. That being/principle gave humans both freedom and conscience, and told us to question everything in its time.

No, you don't question everything. If you did, you would still be stuck questioning your existence before you got out of bed the last time you got out of bed, and if you got past that you would be questioning the toilet, the sink where you wash your hands, the breakfast you ate or your ability to do without breakfast, etc., questions without end. (Hormones in the feed that went into the chicken that laid the egg on your McMuffin?) Even questioning requires prioritization.

When you say you question everything, you simply mean that the Bible is part of the set of everything you think you need to question. No big deal.

I don't particularly find the Song of Solomon inspiring, myself. (Not because the auther is infatuated, but because the cultural background of sexual domination is praised.)

The Bible is a collection of writings by people who were inspired by their search into truth. They were at peace with their consciences, many having had to pay a terrible price in undoing the layers of social false-common sense that had been taught them while they grew up. It also happens to have been culled by power-mongers and edited to the extent those power-mongers thought they could get away with without causing popular rejection. The amazing reality is that truth survives for people who want to find it there.

The authors' hands being "guided by God", but not forced by Him, may seem a small thing, but small things are aften bigger in the long run.

In this respect, the Bible and other scriptures have something a little beyond what is had in common literature. You can, of course, find truth in common literature as well, but scriptures in general have a bit stronger dose of it.

But if all truth could be contained in one book of scripture, this world would be such a poor world there would be no use in being born in it. Circumscribed, yes. Contained, no. The Bible does a better job of circumscribing truth than many other books of scriptures, but it does not contain all truth, especially not in minute detail.

It does contain such interesting truths as, "... ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Questioning is not sufficient. You have to do things to understand them, or even to properly question them. But, "... ask, and ye shall receive," is not about asking for material wealth, is it?

The Testament of Judas? Spurious, thought not quite as spurious as the Song of Solomon or as Bel and the Dragon. However, if you read the Bible carefully, more than once through, you were already aware that Judas Iscariot thought he was acting at Jesus' command, and aware of other truths which that book emphasizes, including the necessity of the crucifixion. (Could Judas have betrayed Jesus without afterwards committing suicide? I hope I never have to ask God.)

The thing about questioning everything, is that it is useless to question if you believe there is no truth. But if you believe there is truth, the truth is already your God, in the only meaningful sense of the word, "God".

Re:God's voice is your conscience

[bill_kress]

I never said I didn't believe in God conscience or an afterlife. To deny those things is as ignorant as being absolutely certain of them--both approaches involve untested faith. Personally I choose to believe in an afterlife, but it came after disposing of the concepts in the bible and coming to it on my own.

So what can we actually know?

We can know that the Christian Bible is written by men, as you said, men searching for truth generally (although much of it was also passed-down oral histories that someone decided to finally put down on paper).

We also know that the stories for the bible were chosen based on compatibility with each other and with the goals of the church at the time.

We do not, however, know that it has any relationship with God. There is no evidence whatsoever that it does. This is where faith comes in, and as I said, faith is a truly evil concept.

Show me, without using faith, how the bible has any connection to a God aside from it's own references.

The favorite arguments of christians are the ones that really bother me. They show how bad faith breaks brains.

See what a wonder you are? You must have been created by a god! Now come learn about God through this bible.

If you can't see the complete, glaring flaws in the logic above, "You must be a christian".

Re:Intelligent Design? (O/T)

[Anonymous Coward]

If people were not controlled by religion, we would not have billions of people starving while the government officials live a luxurious life

That's the most specious argument against religion I've ever heard in my entire life, and I've heard some humdingers.