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

Thus proving once and for all

[Anonymous Coward]

...that God is a woman.

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.

Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Snarfangel]

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

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!

In other news..

[Mechcommander]

Pi = 3.

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:Does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you have no idea where the clitoris is.

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 ....

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

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

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:The Dawn of Quantish Physics ?

[adavies42]

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

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.

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.