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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
filthy law breaking unearthly quasars should be hunted down and expelled from the galaxy.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
For those wondering who "scientists" are, it's the Dharma crew.
I would recommend not flying/sailing for the next few months.
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
Do you mean philote, or am I just missing something? Either way, physicists might object to your use of the word "we." :)
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
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.
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
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'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.
"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.
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.
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.
Yet more evidence that the universe is just a gigantic computer simulation.
Old programmer's adage: Variables won't. Constants aren't.
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.
I'm guessing that we can still count on Murphy's Law?
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.
No he meant Filota, the delicious Greek pastry. Yes, the universe is built out of pastry and is in fact donut shaped.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
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.
Sorry, have to refute this, as first explained by newton.
The Jupiter ball will indeed 'exert more gravity force', however, the extra masses involve require extra energy to accelerate. Drop a 1kg ball, 9.8m/s/s. drop a 2 kg ball, 9.8m/s/s. Twice the mass in the 2kg, but twice the force required to create the same acceleration.
You are wrong, have a nice day
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
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^)>
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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... ***
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)
If you want to learn about nuclear weapons, visit the Nuclear Weapons FAQ. It's an incredible resource for learning about them.
But to answer your question, compressing the bomb's core doesn't make the EM force affect the Strong force. It makes the material dense enough to start a divergent chain reaction, where each nuclear fission causes more than one more fission. Huge amounts of energy are released because when the atoms split, the sum of the mass and nuclear binding energy of the smaller fragments is less than that of the original Pu/U nucleus. The difference shows up as gamma radiation, neutrons, and a spray of other subatomic particles.