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Scientists Question Laws of Nature
mknewman writes "MSNBC is reporting that scientists are finding differences in many of the current scientific 'constants' including the speed of light, alpha (the fine structure constant of the magnetic force), the ratio of proton to electron mass and several others. These findings were made by observing quasars and comparing the results to tests here on the earth." From the article: "Time-varying constants of nature violate Einstein's equivalence principle, which says that any experiment testing nuclear or electromagnetic forces should give the same result no matter where or when it is performed. If this principle is broken, then two objects dropped in a gravitational field should fall at slightly different rates. Moreover, Einstein's gravitational theory -- general relativity -- would no longer be completely correct, Martins says."
For example, Ohm's Law is much more interesting at a sub-microscopic levels
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
I recall reading that as a universe expands or contracts, the constants would theoretically change to adjust to the expansion or contraction of the basic building blocks of matter.
Is it possible that the measuring instruments failed here? I thought that was always a possibility in observations. Is it also possible that the quasars we are observing are differing light years away and thus we are making observations based on data from several billion years ago (as the article states)?
Yes, I think that there is call for speculation on the constants varying over billions of years since the light we are observing is roughly 12 billion years old and all our observations here on earth remain static.
My work here is dung.
FTA:the quasar observations are sometimes interpreted as indicating that light was faster in the past,
They just don't make photons like they use to...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
No one expects the Science Inquisition!
*runs back out the door*
filthy law breaking unearthly quasars should be hunted down and expelled from the galaxy.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
There are no pirates on a quaser.
However there are many here on earth.
liqbase
For those wondering who "scientists" are, it's the Dharma crew.
I would recommend not flying/sailing for the next few months.
Thank God that it is a law of nature we are questioning to gain more understanding of the universe, because if it was questioning God, we would not be allowed to change our minds as we understood more.
If that's the case, should we phisicists start looking for a new particle, underlying eveything? Filota, enyone?
It doesn't take an Einstein to... aww crap.
This is a good thing. One of two things will happen from this
:If option (1) is true, it means we're entering that sort of post-Einsteinian "What the hell's going on here" phase in science, where we have a theory that we thought is good and we have some measurements which we also know are good and conflict with the theory. This will lead to lots more experiments being done and allow us to invent hyperspace faster.
If option (2) is true, it means that the scientists in question will be metaphorically shot by the scientific community for daring to question the great reletivity laws, and remove bad scientists from the community.
It's a win-win!There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
The lorenz attractor is a mathematical example of how sensitivity to initial conditions can affect the results of any test.
There is no way that ANY test can be reproduced perfectly multiple times, however for a large percentage of things tested the differences are so small they are negligable.
If you take a double pendulum and try (to scientific precision) to orient the beams to the exact location the results will be different every single time you do it (fluctuations in the universes' gravitational field caused by me farting or a butterfly flapping its wings for instance).
liqbase
Scientists Question Laws of Nature
Isn't "questioning laws of nature" by definition what scientists do? Question, hypothesis, experiment, theory, law, lather, rinse, repeat - right?
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
In my days we had to wait for the light to travel 1,000,000 miles in the snow, uphill, both ways, to measure it - and we LIKED it.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Doesn't the scientific method say that when the answers don't fit you need to ask why and go throught the steps again? I rember learning in my high school chemistry class that pv=nrt and my teacher said that higher levels of chemistry don't use that formula because it is just sort of a rough guide to gasses. If my chemistry teacher was right I would guess that scientists figured out the easy formula once and fine tuned it as they gained knowledge and better instruments.
Sometimes in astronomy, the handling in errors (both random and systematic) is sloppily done. The random error is probably done ok; but how about systematic ones?
In an attempt to publish hastily, scientists often willingfully ignore some shortcomings in instrumetal calibration, etc., and may not take into account all the uncertainties that should be propagated through their calculations. I hope that those astronomers are not embarrassing themselves by making an error like that.
Apart from the time scale involved, this isn't all that new. Scientific American had an article on this over a year ago.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Isn't that a popular theory with "young earth" creationists?
Constitutionally Correct
It'll always be cool to watch
Oh, it's worse than that. The quasars are different distances away. How do we figure out how far away they are? By measuring the redshift in the frequencies of their spectra. What do we use for that? The relativistic Doppler formula. What is the key constant in the Doppler formula? The speed of light. Actualy, it's even worse, because it's not the naive Doppler formula but one that includes cosmological effects which are not independently observable.
In other words, the distance of the quasars -- and the frequency their light "should" be -- are highly model-dependent.
There's less to this story than meets the eye.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
What if the quasars are not where the scientists think they are, and the who red-shift as a measure of distance in the universe is wrong?
Isn't general relativity incorrect for sub atomic particles anyway? ....it's been like 10 years since my last quantum physics class.
ÕÕ
Well.... yeah. That's their jeorb.
- For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
From the blurb:
Time-varying constants of nature violate Einstein's equivalence principle, which says that any experiment testing nuclear or electromagnetic forces should give the same result no matter where or when it is performed.
Maybe there is a hidden assumption in there. Maybe space itself isn't constant.
We're already thinking that space may have an energy to it. If it has energy, then space would have an equivalent mass. Possibly you could describe that as a density of sorts.
So if space itself has a sort of density, then maybe the slight differences you see in the constants are caused by the varying density of different regions of space they are traveling through to be measured.
IANAP, YMMV, etc. But I think it might be at least possible. Einstein's principle above would have to be edited to say "in equivalent spaces".
That always seems to be the way of scientific progress. You create a set of equations describing what you see, like Newton did. Then someone can see a little farther, and amend them like Einstein did. Another amendment wouldn't be "questioning the laws of nature", it would just simply be understanding them a little better.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
it affects scientists ability to conjecture about what happened in the past greatly. *Wait one while I put on my flameproof suit* Ok so if I may dare to say it I think that this may finally give some backing to the opponents of Macro-Evolution since carbon dating may actually be inaccurate at showing the lapse such long periods of time and the Earth might not be old enough to support Macro-Evolutionary theory in it's current form.
*Jumps out a window and activates his parachute while dodging a hail of bullets coated in hate*
It's worth noting that none of the results described in TFA have actually been confirmed, that they are in fact recent and highly contested, and that many such claims in the past were subsequently retracted or refuted. There is a minor bandwagon on "variable constants", actually; everybody and their brother is measuring physical constants, and pointing at any minor statistical fluctuation way out at the edges of detectability as "evidence of variation".
The implications would be very interesting if any of these claims panned out (which is why it's so popular to make claims like this in the literature), and there are theories in which some of these "constants" are indeed allowed to vary, but we'll need to wait years to see if followup experiments determine that any of these effects are real. Personally, I'm skeptical that any of the specific constants discussed have been proven variable by any of the experiments mentioned in the TFA. I'm not saying the experimentalists are incompetent, but the reported effects are so hard to measure that the effect may just go away after a few more independent checks; this has happened a lot in the literature.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Yes but think of the children......nope doesn't really apply here.
I for one welcome our variable speed of light overlo.....okay yeah that doesn't really apply.
First post.......dammit!!!!
... thinks most of the so-called "laws of nature" are more like habits. Here's his essay on The Variability of Fundamental Constants.
"We aren't able to make observations from several million or billion years ago so we cannot tell whether or not these constants change or at what rate."
Look out at the stars. You're seeing them as they appeared several million or billion years ago. The light that you now see from the sun is 8 minutes old, for comparison. All the data we collect from outer space is historical information--how the universe was in the past.
I call BS.
When an experiment is performed does not matter...
Unless the time in which it is performed happens to be in the VERY early stages of the creation of the universe. At which point, the long established laws of nature break down.
Check me if I'm wrong but quasars are remnants of the very early state of the universe.
Well, I'm a computer scientist not a physicist but I thought these constants are present because all observations so far have verified that.
Well, if your train of thought seriously stopped at "oh, we measured their values", then it's no wonder you're not a physicist.
the closer you get to measuring a small event, the more the attempt to measure it gets in the way.
also called the "uncertainty principle."
there is a good chance that all these differing microerrors in all sorts of differing directions are different diffractions through inteference in what we can observe, thus proving the heisenberg principle has raised its ugly head again.
aka don't sweat it until you get a couple thousand indicators in the same direction. just like this week's surprise medical discovery that pesticides cure cancer, or coffee cures cancer, or coffee cures pesticides, or whatever bogus wrong-way publication made it into print on one limited study. the last line of those articles always reads, "The findings suggest that further studies in the field should be undertaken," which is code for "The previous article was written to get more grant money, send to PO Box 666, Unterderlinden, NJ."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Einstein's gravitational theory -- general relativity -- would no longer be completely correct, Martins says.
First of all, let me preface this by saying IAAP (I am a physicist):
All this talk of laws being "wrong" or no longer "correct" is just popular fluff the press either hypes or makes up.
No physical law is ever completely correct. A physical law is simply a description of reality to the degree to which we understand it, and is "correct" (i.e. produces predicitions which fit our measurements) within the realm of our present experience of the phenomenon it describes. As our understanding and experience of a phenomenon grows to encompass a wider range of circumstances (e.g. scale, velocity), the law needs to be either refined or replaced with new law, possibly based upon a new paradigm.
Newton's laws of motion are no less "correct" now than they ever were. Einstein determined that the realm in which they accurately described reality did not include large velocities near the speed of light (i.e. >0.1c). Quantum mechanics explained how at small scales these same rules no longer applied. Even today, no one yet knows how to reconcile the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics when their realms overlap--this is still pioneering work.
Yet Newton's laws are still taught as the foundation of physics to all new students because they are still valid within the realm or experience in which all of our normal lives are conducted. Models, and the laws derived with them, are valid only within the realm of experience within which they were formed (and, if the inventer is lucky, they hold even beyond that). And they remain valid within that realm even when we find later than they don't hold outside that realm. Even Aristotle's belief that heavier objects fall faster than light objects is valid to a point (within a realm where air friction is a significant contributor), even though Galileo later "proved" this was wrong (i.e. it is not a general law).
Yes, it predicted a number of cool particles, and sure enough, there they are. It also craps out more and more lately. Neutrinos oscillate, huh? Uh, well, we'll fix that later. Gravity... yeah. That's a bitch. I know! More free variables! We're at 19 now, what's 10 more?
This whole thing smacks of turn-of-the-20th-century Newtonians trying to cobble together a decent explanation for black-body radiators. They tried all kinds of tricks--turns out they didn't work, because the system is not Newtonian. Newtonian physics was awesome for predicting meso-scale behavior, but it's a dog at small and large scales. Similarly, I think, the Standard Model was super-dynamite for a good number of years, but to hang on to it through all these issues should be a red flag that something else might be a better explanation. Kuhn, here we come.
blarg.
If this is true, then by Noether's Theorem, the law of conservation of energy is invalid. What does that mean for our universe?
On the subject of string theory and the possibility of other universes/dimensions with differing laws of nature, I've often wondered about whether constants change with time or the growth of a universe; if the spatial complexities or aging or changes in dimensions we don't percieve directly affect constants and laws... while we can percieve light that originated billions of years ago, that light may be subject to different laws as it reaches us now. We'd have no real way to test it, either, as our measurements of the universe are far too nacent.
Just a thought, could be totally off-track.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Q: "Easy: Change the gravitational constant of the universe."
Geordi: "What?"
Q: "Change the gravitational constant of the universe, thereby altering the asteroid's orbit."
Geordi: "How do you do that?"
Q: "You just DO it, that's all..."
Data: "What Geordi is saying is that we do not have the ability to change the gravitational constant of the universe."
Q: "Well, then, you obviously never read slashdot."
Scientific theories form two main purposes: 1. They are useful at predicting how things will behave (e.g. important for NASA) 2. They provide a framework to show the way for future work. Einstein's axioms of constancy were constructs built from empirical evidence which yielded some interesting and very useful insights into the way things worked. They also showed potential paths forward which Einstein himself pursued until his death. Einstein himself knew his theories were not the last word and any scientist knows this is a fundamental philosophy of the scientific method. The rest of the world can pretend there is something else sensational going on if they want to but it isn't science.
Nice try, but carbon dating only works up to 60K years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating. The distance and time out to quasars is billions of years - beggining of universe type time.
I'm not a physicist either... Electrical, but if they are using the gaseous clouds in their measurements, what makes them believe the gaseous clouds are not moving? I mean if you have different densities and different gasses moving at various different speeds... wouldn't all that contaminate the results? I mean I'm not at work all the time, when I'm there the 'lights' are 'on', and when I'm at home, the 'lights' at work are 'off'. Eh?
Yet more evidence that the universe is just a gigantic computer simulation.
Old programmer's adage: Variables won't. Constants aren't.
At least for this example of this assertion as compared to any others which are invalid.
Even the ones you think lead to a gaping abyss. You never know when there'll be an ore field on the way.
I'm tired of hearing people tell my friend from Georgia Tech that he can't develope a free energy device. The quantum model is far from perfect. It is entirely possible we could extract the [theories, now] ZPE (our gravitational like-force experienced in the casimir-effect) from empty space. Who are these people to comdemn him? How many of them went to Georgia Tech? Do they have the schematics and plans for a device for free energy? No. How would they know anything about it? Are they willing to fund him so he can build his? Even though that might prove them right, they're too busy running after their quantum smoke. They're no better than the Catholic Church railing on Galileo.
Just think about it..
:P
Example:
Since there is no spoon^W law
and we all know that:
Judge Dredd is the law
we can conclude that: there is no Judge Dredd*
* not that this isn't a bad thing
One of my hypothesis from high school was that all of the "laws" we've found to be true for our planet, may not hold true when applied arcoss the universe. The problem is that we're observing too small of a sample size. Our planet is a mere spec when compared to the total of all masses in existance.
Chances are, the laws we now know are correct... but only when applied to our planet. The displacement caused by the earth is what gives us gravity. Should the displacement of the Earth be altered by either adding or subtracting large amounts of high density molecules, then the gravity would also shift. The laws of science will only hold true when the variables being measures are the same. ie - The speed that light travels given our displacement will yield different results than the speed light travels when given a different displacement (namely, a quazar).
Is the sky blue?
Yes.
Why?
(source) [quote] The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air. However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.[/quote]
Yet if we were to observe the same sky from outer space, the same princinple does not apply. Now the sky is blue because you are looking down on many large bodies of water.
Perception is 9/10 of reality.
The laws of physics would have to be rewritten, not to mention we might need to make room for six more spatial dimensions than the three that we are used to.
Somehow, I'm not able to straight now! Why is everything around me just a blur?
Oh, there are my glasses...
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
I'm guessing that we can still count on Murphy's Law?
Like that's going to stop the ID people from harping on this.
"If theoretical physics can get some things wrong, it's exactly as likely that God built the entire universe as it is 6000 years ago as it is that we evolved over millions of years" sounds like a valid argument to these people.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Yes, I often feel that way when I'm drunk, too.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I spend a major amount of time explaining that the formulas that my students memorize are just approximations of reality. In engineering terms, you choose the approximation that is close enough to get the job done. As the requirement for accuracy increases, so does the length of the equation you use.
The parent is absolutely right, Newton is just as accurate now as he was 100 years ago. I don't need quantum physics to calculate the trajectory of an artillery shell. On the other hand, if I want to predict the wavelength of a laser then Newton doesn't quite cut it.
No. We're talking about very small changes over billions of years. Any effect on radiometric dating would be a tiny fraction of a percent, completely irrelevant to paleobiology - you're not going to hear, "OMG! With this new model, we understand that this fossil is actually 2,317,001 years old (plus or minus 2,000), not 2,317,000 (plus or minus 2,000)! This changes everything!"
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Only at pretty low redshift, though. At any redshift appreciably close to or greater than 1, there really isn't much meaning to "distance" --- would you interpret that distance to be at the time of emission, the time of detection, or somewhere in between? We basically just use the cosmological redshift, which says that the redshift z represents how much the universe has expanded since the radiation was emitted. That's it. Any "distance" or lookback time is model-dependent. Instead of measuring slight deviations in universal constants, they are perhaps measuring perturbations in a particular cosmological model.
In other words, the distance of the quasars -- and the frequency their light "should" be -- are highly model-dependent.
Right --- I'm just picking nits, since I've seen lots of confusion by others in similar reports.
in the post text you read:
"scientists are finding differences in many of the current scientific 'constants'"
in the article the sentence says:
"Recent research has found evidence that the value of certain fundamental parameters, such as the speed of light or the invisible glue that holds nuclei together, may have been different in the past."
whats the use if people cant tell the difference between MAY and ARE?
there is a big difference between "you MAY die this week" and "you ARE to die this week"
i know, its all relative, and i know what they meant... but you know what? thats not true. i opened this because i thought the may actually turned to an are... a possibliity realized. when i get there, its still may, and people cant even read basically.
This just isn't right! They changed the results by observing them!
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Osborn's Law:
Variables won't; constants aren't.
Thank the BSD fortune file on my machine at home.
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
Duh! Two objects dropped in a gravitational field do fall at slightly different rates. We don't need any new fancy changes to the laws of nature to prove that. What they keep telling you in physics class about a light object and a heavy object falling at exactly the same rate when dropped in a vacumn is a lie, plain and simple, and there is an easy way to realize that:
Say that you are on an earth size planet with no atmosphere and you drop two similar size spheres (but, and this is important, you drop them one at a time and measure the time of the fall). One is normal matter. One is Neturon Star matter and has the mass of Jupiter. Do you think they fall at the same speed in this 1 G planet? The answer is clearly that can't, The Jupiter mass sphere pulls on the planet with the same G forces that Jupiter does, so dropping the Jupiter mass on the 1 G planet would be more like dropping the Earth or any other mass on Jupiter than just dropping a large mass on a 1 G planet. It is clear that the mass of the the dropped object contributes to the attraction between the two bodies and that a heavy mass must fall faster than a light mass. That object the mass of Jupiter must pull anything towards it with the same pull of gravity that you would measue on Jupiter, be it Newton's apple or a planet the mass of Earth. Oh sure, it normally doesn't fall much faster, and something twice as heavy certainly doesn't fall twice as fast. But in spite of everything the physics book say, this simple thought experiment with ultra heavy masses should prove that the heavier the mass, the more it will fall faster.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
One thing that has always intrigued... and disturbed me, is the possibility that the rate at which time itself flows might not be constant or uniform, and may even be affected by our attempt to use time in any calculations or attempt to measure it against whatever frame of reference we can conceive with which to do so.
I think the scientists forget the concept of context? Do things need to be exactly x number always to be right? I don't think it's really scientific to make broadbrush conclusions that if light varies to some degree, or gravity, or any other force, then everything must be wrong because clearly by seeing how our world isn't falling apart at the fundamental scales that's proof enough that Nature is robust compared to the mathematical models we humans construct to understand it. Remember, observation trumps mathematical modelling in every case. And because of that, principles that follow from the least number of premises with the least number of contigencies will tend to prevail as the best explanation for what is occuring, not Platonic Realm modeling and other Post-Modern/Exie tripe. Bleh! Where is Alan Sokal when you need him!
-- Bridget
Why can't it just be that the gas clouds between here and there have a different makeup than assumed?
I could have swore that said "the ratio of porn to electron mass."
I will forever be a student.
Did you or did you not cause one Peter Miller to fall when he accidentally stepped off the edge of that cliff on November 19th?
Did you or did you not fatally electrocute one Robert Schindler when he mishandled a household 220V line on January the 7th.
Are you or are you not responsible for mangling one Sally Parks when her car deccelerated from 65mph to 0 in the course of striking a tree on March 8th?
You're honor, we scientists request that the Laws of Nature be jalied without bail as they have been clearly demonstrated a threat to the community.
I think a more impressive story would be "Scientists DON'T Question Laws of Nature."
This is really the crux of a measurement. How many assumptions from the model are used to make the measurement? In an ideal experiment, the measurement itself is what verifies or falsifies the model, but in reality there are usually other parameters that are needed as inputs to the experiment that are computed using the model, thus the model dependence. I'm in experimental high energy particle physics and we worry about this every day, and try to reduce the number of theoretical inputs needed to make sense of our data. I'm sure the astronomers do likewise, but sometimes inputs are unavoidable. This doesn't make the measurement invalid because a model should be self consistent as well. So if you correctly compute the inputs using the model, and your results still differ from the model then some double checking of everything needs to be done because the model is showing a flaw. The true size of the flaw is the really hard thing to quantify because all of the quatities are model-dependent. In the end this could turn out to be nothing or the start of something.
I welcome all chinks in scientific theories because it generally leads to new scientific understanding and a new round of theories and models. Really that's what science is all about. In my field, we all hope that the LHC finds the Higgs, that will solidify the Standard Model, but we also hope that it finds lots of things that don't fit the Standard Model, that would point the direction for future discovery. If we didn't find anything unusual at the LHC it might put a huge damper on particle physics, and I'd have to switch areas of research.
Laws of Nature should be happy that it is scientists, who are questionning them and not the US Department of Homeland Security. When those DHS guys decide to question those laws, then the nature should really start getting worried, until then it should be just sitting there, happy that the weakest (physically) segment of the population is asking the questions.
You can't handle the truth.
What these scientists have found isn't necessarily correct. There has to be more evidence before it gets to having enough evidence to be get it to established theory.
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
Physicists...hmm, if you started looking for both starting now it still might be a while before you find either.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
I'm just worried now that I won't get decent mileage out of my anti-matter engines in parts of the galaxy where the Light Speed Limit is lower than it is here.
I say its time we campaigned for universal regulation and stopped letting all these regional parochial galaxies and quasars set their own laws. Nothing's worse than getting pulled over for exceeding the laws of physics in some backwater in the Southern Cross.
This is an old problem with science put forth by David Hume. In order for science to work the future must be like the past and the past must be like the present observations. Any "constants" found by observing a finite part of the universe and applying it to the whole may be problematic, yet we are willing to jump into the metaphysics of "and yet it MUST be so!" from our observations and ingenious models that seem to work so very well. Now, it does work very very well because you can build a remarkably functional rocket based on our laws of science, so on a pragmatic level science is an exceptionally solid epistemology. But the metaphysics are the problem, if you care to take metaphysics into the equation. The engineers designing a functional rocket don't. And I consider myself a pragmatist, so let them build a better mousetrap even if they mistakenly call them "laws". }8^)>
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
Homer: Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
All this proves that so called "scientific inquiry" is not only useless, but worse than useless. My faith tells me that the world is only 8,322 years old. My number remains constant, while all of these "scientists" keep changing their minds about important constants. Tell me, which is more believable: A consistent interpretation of reality, or one that changes all the time? The former is infinitely more comfortable, and the latter makes me scared because it means that I have to keep on accepting new information and re-evaluating reality.
But seriously, this is the sort of nonsensical opinion science faces in the United States. Don't be surprised if the Creationists and other antediluvians take these latest scientific inquiries as "proof" that scientific method is inferior to rabid faith. Does anyone know if there any organization that is mounting an effective educational campaign to counter this insanity?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"Varying constants" is my new phrase of the day.
Oh, but it's even worse than THAT... recent observations that the vacuum is *not* purely empty, but apparently seething with energy, give rise to a modern, quantum mechanical confirmation of the 19th century concept of that sacreligious word: the (a)ether. But, modelled as a matrix of quantum particles (muons, in this case), it is possibly palatable to modern science. How can this be relevant, you ask? When one models physics BASED on this matrix of quanta, all kinds of things that are currently mysteries become clear. Like for example, the observation that redshift is quantized. That, along with other observations, give lie to the fact that Doppler redshift of star spectra is *ONLY* due to distance and speed. Which means that all astronomical distances recorded and marked based on redshift alone, vs. parallax measurements, fall under new scrutiny. And which allows for areas of the universe (like the high-energy surrounds of quasars) that have a higher energy density than our local galactic neighborhood. And these higher energy domains have "ether" concentrations that will affect what? You guessed it: the speed of light, the fine structure constant, the cosmological constant, and the value of G, the gravitational constant.
>> We aren't able to make observations from several million or billion years ago
sure we are, isn't that what hubble is for?
to look at light from millions of years ago and make observations?
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
The problem is in the definition of the term "Free Energy". If you have to build it, it isn't free. The one that always strikes me is the experiments with magnet powered devices. I can't count the number of times that I have heard "It's impossible because of the laws of thermodynamics". They are constantly called perpetual motion machines, and "Free Energy". As far as I can tell a magnet powered device has a power source. It's called a magnet. Calling a magnet powered device a perpetual motion machine is no different than calling a flashlight a perpetual motion machine. Magnatism is energy right? You do have to put the magnet into the device for it to work, right? So you have added energy, and thus it is neigther free energy, nor a perpetual motion machine.
The point is, that while there are many kooks out there trying to develope 'free energy', there are also a lot of people that don't know as much as they think they do, and spout of arguments they don't understand (like the thermodynamics one) to dismiss people that have little (not zero) chance of success.
The grandparent post gets a +4, Insightful even though it misses the point. What part of "why" doesn't he understand? If we don't know why those values are what they are, then they are mere facts, incapable of explaining anything: "Light travels at the speed of light because that's the speed at which light travels."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
A lot of the SM's important values are empirical and "bolted on".
But, I thought that that was part of the point - that those constants were, to some degree, arbitrary, and simply represent how this universe settled down after the big bang?
Science wouldn't lie to me, would it?
Clear, Dark Skies
A lead ball falls faster than a feather. Any fool knows that. It is something that you can easily observe. The problem happens when you try to extrapolate from that basic, and correct, observation.
Also, a lead ball does fall faster than an iron ball of the same diameter. The drag may be the same but the force is not. If air is absent, the force of gravity and the inertia of a mass act in such a way that any mass is accelerated the same. Air isn't absent though and the force required to move the object through the air is subtracted from the force available to accelerate the object. Since the lead ball has more available force it accelerates more quickly and has a higher terminal velocity.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Creationists have been questioning carbon dating for a very long time despite being told what I'm about to tell you, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but on the off chance you care at all about knowing what you're talking about:
Carbon dating has dididly-squat to do with evolution. If you proved that carbon dating didn't work at all, even a little bit (which isn't the case) it would not impact the evidence for evolution in the least. The accuracy of carbon dating declines as the date you're measuring goes further into the past; while it is an excellent technology for the anthropologist studying hunter-gatherer tribes of a thousand years ago, it is completely useless for dating fossil remains anywhere close to old enough to be interesting in terms of evolution. The key point is: Everybody knows this; It is not news. The scientists who have studied evolution, and concluded it is correct, and built the entire modern science of biology atop it did not ever rely on carbon dating in that process.
Mentioning carbon dating in your questioning of evolution is a great way to flag yourself as someone who doesn't know what they are talking about, and probably knows it.
Yet more evidence that the universe is just a gigantic computer simulation.
It could be argued that a lot of the weirdness in quantum mechanics is down to programming shortcuts for efficiency reasons. E.g. look at things like the double-slit experiment - maybe it's less expensive to simulate a wave function than a particle and only collapse the wave function when it's measured. Just a thought.
In any case, even if the universe is a giant computer simulation, does that make it any less "real" (whatever "real" means)? And there's no way we'd ever know one way or another - the best we can do is discover the rules that govern the workings of the internals of the universe, not the externals.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Another effect of global warming?
Well... To be fair, it is quite possible that our observations are incorrect since the human mind is quite susceptible to assumptions or deceptions of our senses or that all light particles and waves in the universe changed speed at the same time a billion years ago when no one was looking.
On the grand scale of things if something happened 10 billion years ago and all current evidence of it and its effects were removed from the universe or put outside the observable universe (you know... outside the realm of the visible universe from our point of observation of Earth) then we would not have the slightest clue (or observation) that this phenomenon occurred.
Secondly, there might be phenomena in the universe we can't observe through our 5 senses. Imagine if we happened to be evolved without ears or eyes. Hard luck seeing stars or listening to radio waves.
However, our technology appears to be able to compensate this to detect radiation and various other unperceivable effects in the universe (although being able to detect radiation with a sensory organ would be kind of cool)
Personally, I would like the to think the universe has a set of laws that it goes by because living in a logical universe makes sense and makes it easier to sleep at night without worrying about my atoms decaying in my sleep or time reverses on me.
However... I still have to worry about my senses deceiving me because I can only prove to myself that I exist...
As Descartes so eloquently put in his Evil Demon theorem:
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
A scientist named Murphy is observing variations in universal constants. Go figure, there is already a law that explains this.
Ducks quack.
Film at 11.
If the world doesn't match your reality, arrange the world.
If constants are no longer constants, this simply mean there is an underlying physical law which should be liable for this change. It appears to me too much convenient to claim this at this point. On such a basis, anyone can say about anything and arrange the constants to match the experimental results.
Achille Talon
Hop!
The article doesn't go into detail but I suspect the changes they're observing are a bit more subtle than the redshift not being exactly what they thought it might be. Note also that they're not talking about the speed of light or the strength of the electromagnetic force, but rather the fine structure constant, which is a unitless RATIO of two constants.
I expect what they're observing is not all of the spectral lines being in the wrong place (as you'd get with different redshifts) but rather SOME of them being out by a bit.
For example, suppose the light you're observing went through a big hydrogen cloud ten billion years ago then another one half a billion years ago. You get one set of hydrogen absorption lines pretty much where you expect (from the more recent encounter) and one not quite where you expect (ie not in the same place as the other). That implies that something weird went on with the electromagnetism, perhaps the force weakening or light slowing down, but you can't tell which.
Undoubtedly that example is oversimplified too, but you'd have to wade through the paper to find out. The article on space.com is a bit better about explaining why you can't just look at the speed of light -- your measuring stick might change or depend on something else, as you pointed out.
Scientists question nature's fundamental laws! What the hell are they thinking? Who do they think they are to question nature's fundemental laws? Its not like they came up with it!
Actually, it's his Theory of General Relativity. Even Einstien said it was imperfect and incorrect for all things. He was looking for a Theory of Specific Relativity, but that eluded him as it has all others since then. String theory is the latest greatest attempt at specific relativity, but it doesn't hold water every time either, nor does quantum mechanics, although both are pretty close.
Joao Magueigo wrote a really great book predicting this about 5 years ago. Check it out. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
What you are saying about Carbon Dating is True. http://www.trueauthority.com/cvse/carbon.htm
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What I said about Carbon-14 dating applies to other radiometric dating as well. But it is still relevent. Why? Because Carbon Dating is thought to be really accurate. Still scientists throw out the data from it all the time because it shows items to be younger then they thought was possible. What it the items were not only younger then they thought but younger then the C-14 data showed? What if fossils really are only 6000 years old? Now I am not going to say that only a new earth view of the world will dissprove evolution. Macro-Evolution is so full of holes that it's amazing people can see what the theory really is anymore.
Page showing C-14 datum being thrown away. http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/carbondatin
Also consider that as we look further into the universe, we're looking back in time, so it's not really that farfetched that there might be slight variations in some of the universal constants of the past.
Scientists question nature's fundamental laws
Laws such as the speed of light may have been different in the past
By Lord Dorwin
Look heah now, I've got the wuhks of all the old mastahs - the gweat ahchaeologists of the past. I wigh them against each othah - balance the disagwements - analyze the conflicting statements - decide which is pwabably cowwect - and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. How insuffewably cwude it would be to go to Ahctuwus, oah to Sol, foah instance, and blundah about, when the old mastahs have covahed the gwound so much moah effectively than we could possibly hope to do.
You change the gravitational constant of the universe to where the Enterprise has the "power" to move the asteroid to where the want/need it to go.
Change it back to avoid any abnormal consquences.
Michael Jordan is good at this... he often appears to be walking up a set of invisible stairs to the goal that only he can see and use!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I think a satelite is being sent up that may settle quasar distance questions, but I can't remember the name of it.
Also, I think it uses seperate points of refernce that are not tied to the earth per say.
Time-varying constants of nature violate Einstein's equivalence principle, which says that any experiment testing nuclear or electromagnetic forces should give the same result no matter where or when it is performed.
No it doesn't
The principle of equivalence, more properly called the principle of covariance, says that the laws of physics can be expressed covariantly. This means that your co-ordinate system does not matter. Actually you have to make sure you take derivatives in a physically meaningful way rather than just relative to your arbitary co-ordinates.
But this is entirely a local principle. It does not mean that an experiment performed in one place will give the same results as the same experiment performed elsewhere.
For example, observe cepheid variables from down a gravity well!
The principle of equivalence in its limited form (that leads on to the principle of covariance) says you can't tell the difference between acceleration and gravity. Once again this is a local phenomenum because in an elevator (or other closed box) of non-trivial size, you can distinguish them by observing the curvature associated with gravity.
Squirrel!
The speed of light is no longer a measurable fundamental constant. Instead, the vacuum velocity of light is used to determine measures of length in the SI system.
Saying the speed of light has changed is like saying the length of a second has changed. It doesn't make sense.
But there's more to the story that meets the eye sooner, since it will have increased mass.
> Not since the quantum crisis have scientists been that arrogant to assume that their theories are set in stone
I agree with your point that hypotheses are tentative, but the credit for this idea really goes to Karl Popper. Before his "Logic of Scientific Discovery" groups like the Vienna School were hooked on the idea of inductive methods for scientific argument.
You don't actually think that a random angelfire.com page is a reliable source for anything scientific do you? Try a journal article next time or don't waste the electrons.
There are some other things that can be used to guesstimate quasar distances - for just one, gravitational lensing effects accumulate if there are more galaxise between us and the observed quasar, and so the quasars with the most complex total lensing are likely to also be exceptionally far. (The comparison would be a statistical average methodology for a laege sample of quasars, rather than serving to predict distances for any individual quasar). There are probably enough observations already on record to compare total lensing complexity with the doppler formula predictions with pre-existing data, and it shouldn't be too calculation intensive. (Just imagine a Beowulf Cluster of old cheap boxes, six months actual processing, and a grad student looking for a good doctoral thesis). I wouldn't be at all surprised if this has already been done.
Offhand, there are probably also different ratios for the really high energy cosmic rays emitted (Particularly cosmic rays over the theoretical maximum predicted for an extra galactic source) These last have been observed coming from extra galactic sources such as quasars. The theoretical maximum is known as the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit, and is derived from GR. It's a puzzle for cosmologists that the GZK limit doesn't match real world observations, but I don't know if anyone has actually matched sources with other distance prediction methods on a large scale. Cosmics over the GZK limit are rare, but not ultra rare events, and it may take a decade or so to amass enough data to be able to draw significant conclusions, but more data gathering here would probably give us some distance checks on the relativistic doppler method faster than it will explain the failure of GZK itself.
Who is John Cabal?
"Secondly, there might be phenomena in the universe we can't observe through our 5 senses. Imagine if we happened to be evolved without ears or eyes. Hard luck seeing stars or listening to radio waves."
:-( I want a refund!
No fair! You got the new-fangled ears with RF descriminators built in. Mine only came with the old-school ability to detect SLF to VLF frequencies of compressed gas vibrations
Your point is true about scientists having non-rational fundamentally held beliefs, and in my opinion this is not off-topic. The fundamentally held belief pertinent to this thread is, "The universe obeys certain unchanging laws which may be deduced through systematic observations."
The idea that constants are really "constant" is a long-held assumption - one that has generally held up to questioning, and this assumption is necessary for most real work to be conducted. However, it is just that - an assumption.
I am a scientist and I have learned the importance in clearly stating your assumptions prior to any analysis or conclusion. Generally, however, it is quite difficult for people to be aware of their own biases and assumptions. The key thing we need to do, in order to remain agile and open-minded, is to avoid thinking that our assumptions are invariant laws of the universe.
A random web page, now there's an authority! If it's on the Interweb, it must be true!
Let's see, if says an Alosaurus bone C-14 dated to 16,000 years, hence all scientific dating must be suspect and maybe the earth is only 6000 years old. OK, the logic isn't close to sound, but let's skip that. In any case it's lying right off the top: There are no allosaurus bones. Allosaurus is known only through fossils, in which the minerals in the bones got slowly replacedby minerals from the surrounding sediment. All the organic material is long gone. That is to say, there is no CARBON. Nobody ever carbon dated an allosaurus "bone". You can't carbon date rock.
I guess you guys pick on carbon dating because people have heard of it? But what's the point? If the idea is that god created the earth as-is 6000 years ago, with the (carbon free) dinosaur fossils in place, couldn't he have made the C-14/C-12 ratios of things that are actually carbon dateable anything he pleased? Why bother arguing so incompetently against carbon dating when your idea is consistent with it?
Oops. *NOT* the speed of light.
Some people already knew this. Thank goodness it's making the news though. Some terms to Google for in regards to this include: red shift, speed of light, vacuum.
In any case, even if the universe is a giant computer simulation, does that make it any less "real" (whatever "real" means)? And there's no way we'd ever know one way or another
Sure, there is. The first "The One" could free a few minds and pull the corresponding bodies out of their energy pods, and the revolution would proceed from there. Of course, the end result of the war would be a horribly unsatisfying truce in which the last "The One" dies. Or something like that. Yeah.
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
You had light??!!
In my days it was so dark as to be virtually blindfolded and we had to wait for any light, in the snow, uphill, both ways, unable to measure it! AND WE LIKED IT!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
When I were a lad we had to get up at 2am in the morning to be down the pit by 3am to mine our own photons. With our bare hands and if we were lucky some shards of broken glass to use as shovels. No poncying about WAITING for some light to come along. Then our little sis had to walk down to the other end of the space time continuum in her bare feet to hold the end of the string we used to measure it with. And we were PROUD of ourselves, I tell you.
You mean we don't have a perfect understanding of the universe? Holy crap!
Seriously, why would we assume that the ratio between the mass of an electron and a proton would be a constant anyway?
Or you could imagine Beowulf clusters of changing constants.
I don't want to know what you'd do with hot grits and a petrified Natalie Portman, though.
If this principle is broken, then two objects dropped in a gravitational field should fall at slightly different rates.
Only if the physical constants are different for the two objects. If, within the context in which they fall, the constants are the same, the objects will drop at the same rate. The experiments show that these constants vary over extreme amounts of time, with no proof as of yet that they vary over distance.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
"Is it possible that the measuring instruments failed here? "
No.
And that's the real point. And it's subtle, one does need to have a mature appreciation of *science*
to grasp. The measuring instruments would show no effect. In fact, if you changed all the fundamental
constants everything would look just the same, the universe would carry on as per normal. What really matters
is the ratios between the constants. Now, I remember this discussion happening with Hawking. What if we were
to observe some part of the universe where all the physical constants were completely different? It would look
the same as the next piece of the universe. To the observer the net effect is a homogenous space-time,
but there's no reason to suppose all places and times in the universe are actually the same. Indeed, on intuition
alone, it would seem odder if it were completely homogenous.
This is not a prank/crank post....
;)
I am not a physisict but I had a few college level physics classes...
I always wondered why nukes were so devastating, now I think I know why....
Consider a subcritical lump of 'fissile material', it has all 4 forces present in it:
(below bit 'adapted from the 'info box' at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13816702/)
Strong: Glues together the parts of a nucleus. (must be a LOT of energy stored this way!)
Electromagnetic: Holds electrons around atoms; explains light. (and the EM pulse of a nuclear explosion from infrared through the visible spectrum up to X-rays [and beyond])
Weak: Responsible for certain radioactive decays. (mesurable with a Geiger counter)
Gravity: Keeps planets, stars, glaxies from flying apart. (said lump has mass and has a definite 'weight')
Ok, is this sequence of events right? Any physisict here feel free to correct me...anonymously if you need to....
Compressing said lump to a critical mass would change the EM force present which would affect the strong force and release all the energy stored there with eminently observable results
Is this sequence of events right or wrong? I am curious from a theoretical point of view...
Thank you for your consideration.
"We have an incomplete theory, so you look for holes that will point to a new theory," Murphy says. Varying constants may be just such a hole.
Is it really such a good idea to have a scientist named Murphy help redefine our understanding of the laws of physics?
Are you seriously suggesting that scientists now believe that the universe works only because of the presence of some mysterious phenomenon that nobody has ever observed directly, and which science itself is unable to explain?
Are these the same scientists who believe that talk of "god" has no place in science?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
welcome our new (in)constant overlords or would if quantum mechanics allowed me to state what they were and when and where at the same time.
What I took away from the field of physics so far was that constant variables are bunk and largely a matter of fudging. The important constants are actually the formulaic and thus geometric relationships between the variables. Such as E=mc^2. If c is variable then with a factor n,
E=m((nc)^2) which amounts to E=(m/(n^2))((n^2)(c^2))
So for energy to remain the same without violations, as the local speed of light increases, mass must decrease.
I don't believe and never have that the individual value constants are constant but subject to the spacetime fabric and its conditions.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I wonder how long it will take before the charge on the electron changes enough to require a significant redesign of the brain?
... perhaps Neanderthals were telepathic, and they dies out when the system fell out of tune.
In fact, I wonder if there are already disfunctions
Wolfgang Pauli was granted an audience with God. Pauli asked God why the fine structure "constant" is not constant. God nodded, went to a blackboard, and began scribbling equations at a furious pace. Pauli watched Him with great satisfaction, but soon began shaking his head violently...
Science manages your irrational expectations about how the world will behave in the future, whereas religion proposes irrational moral precepts like "don't feed your children to the moloch." They cannot be compared as if they were two ways of doing the same thing.
The creationists and their ilk are the exceptions that prove the rule—religion today is not much concerned with world-explanation.
IANAP (I Am Not A Physicist), but how the heck can they "find a difference in the [constant]" of speed of light? I thought that the speed of light (c, as they taught me to say) was defined to be exactly 299,792,458 m/s. Did somebody one day wake up and go "Aww, some schmuck went ahead and changed the darn definition again" or how exactly does that work?
Is that, like, the equivalent of a Physicist Wiki edit war, but with more committees involved?
But they explain different things, as your examples well illustrate. No one asks astronomy to make suffering and death bearable.
(Medieval Catholicism's flirtation with natural science is, by the way, another exception that proves the rule: it would not be noteworthy were it normal.)