Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
we need more research to tell if this is first or not.
This isn't the first time that some team has claimed this. Around 2000, someone made the same claim. I recall it not standing up when other teams checked it.
Measurements like this have been done before and usually show a constant, er, constant to within experimental uncertainty.
Note, for example, this paragraph buried at the end of the article:
Nonetheless, the study “is as speculative as the previous claims,” asserts Patrick Petitjean of the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, whose team has looked for variations in the fine-structure constant with the Very Large Telescope as far back as about 11.5 billion years ago and found none (SN: 4/8/04, p. 301).
In other words, I wouldn't get excited at all yet.
Evidence for spatial variation of the fine structure constant
An evaluation from a practicing physicist would be appreciated.
This week's "The Economist" has a good article on this: http://www.the-economist.com/node/16930866
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Ok, I guess 9 years is acceptable for a dupe, and tbh I didn't even read the article, in /.'s finest tradition, so it might be an actual new development :-)
Kinda sure there was some piece of news on the subject from around 2005-2006 too, but can't find it atm. Meh, google-fu weak at 3am, should sleep, work in under 5 hours.
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
Writing as an outside critic of academic physics, I am still very appreciative of the old paper by Max Planck on the constants of physics. The paper is a prime part of relativity theory (the theory of invariants as it is better termed).
The speed of light, the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, the magnetic constant, and the Boltzmann constant serve to define units of measurement. So any variation of those constants only reduces to some weird physical observation that is correctable by fixing the calibration, not to a provable variation of the constants.
If the charge of the electron changes, then you have nonconservation or nonlocal transfer of charges to deal with. These alternatives are mathematically intractable; the Bianchi identities that apply to conservation are very hard to dispose of.
Michael J. Burns
Quantum Electro-Dynamics, not Quod Est Demonstratum.
Who is John Cabal?
Duplicate joke for a duplicate claim:
Planck's constant (h) increased in value this morning to roughly 50 joule-seconds, sending the DJIA to a 95% confidence interval between 0 and 15,000, and increasing the wavelength of a penny moving at a brisk walk to a value on the order of it's own diameter, so that macroscopic, every day objects behave as waves instead of billiard balls. Tennis players in central park (whose velocity could not be determined as of this printing) may have been alarmed to find tennis balls which hit their rackets were defracted and created interference patterns on the fence behind, instead of going into the opposing court.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.