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Fine-Structure Constant Maybe Not So Constant
Kilrah_il writes "The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measured lately by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: 'This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it's not simply systematic errors' in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that 'it's a competent team and a thorough analysis.' But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, 'it needs more proof before we'll believe it.'"
Wow. Check out Figure 5. It's hard to believe there's any systematic signal in their data, they have blue and red points mixed up all over the sky. They claim there's an excess of one color in one hemisphere and the other color in the other hemisphere, but it's not very strong signal at all. This isn't my field (I work on Saturn's rings), but my first reaction is amazement that this is serious enough to be talking to the press about.
(I'm also more than a little put off by the fact that this hasn't been accepted, evidently, merely submitted to a journal. And not even an astrophysical journal like AJ or ApJ which seem like a far better fit for this subject matter and the audience.)