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Fine Structure Constant May Not Be So Constant

Posted by Soulskill on from the pi-is-exactly-three dept.

BuzzSkyline writes "According to a post at Physics Buzz, 'Just weeks after speeding neutrinos seem to have broken the speed of light, another universal law, the fine structure constant might be about to crumble.' Astronomical observations seem to indicate that the constant, which controls the strength of electromagnetic interactions, is different in distant parts of the universe. Among other things, the paper may explain why the laws of physics in our corner of the universe seem to be finely tuned to support life. The research (abstract) is so controversial that it took over a year to go from submission to publication in Physical Review Letters, rather than the weeks typical of most other papers appearing in the peer-reviewed journal."

37 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Okay by durrr · · Score: 4, Funny

    So rename it the Fine Structure Variable then.

    1. Re:Okay by 0123456 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When I was studying physics at school I measured the gravitational acceleration of a pendulum and it was 10% different to the accepted value.

      Of course back then my teacher called me a dumb-ass and told me to do it again rather than plastering the news all over the media.

    2. Re:Okay by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Informative

      Your point being exactly what? That your half assed undergrad project is analogous to years of research by a professional team? That only research that agrees with the standard view of things should get published?

      Do you understand that the point of research and publication is to foster discussion and thinking?

      Sounds like your teacher had you pegged.

      --
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    3. Re:Okay by History's+Coming+To · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Funny example to use though - there are persistent rumours of anomalous behaviour in pendulums (pendula?) during solar eclipses. I don't know how rigorous the "experiments" in question are, my guess is not very, but an odd example to use. The basic point is right though - if your experiment disagrees with current theory then you should really presume you've done something silly until you've eradicated every error you can think or, then you ask for help...in this case, by publishing.

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    4. Re:Okay by sexconker · · Score: 2

      Sounds like your teacher had you pegged.

      But he still doesn't know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs.

    5. Re:Okay by Solandri · · Score: 3

      Small pendulums are a poor method to measure g. The common formula for the period, T = 2pi sqrt(L/g) is derived using the approximation that sin(theta) = theta for small theta. That is, the formula assumes the angular displacement of the pendulum is small.

      When a student is given a small pendulum to measure, they usually give it a large displacement to make measurement easier. This violates the above assumption, and thus the pendulum's period will not match that predicted by the common formula. Most early rigorous work with pendulums used massive devices taller than a house to try to minimize this error (as well as reducing air resistance by slowing the velocity).

    6. Re:Okay by blue+trane · · Score: 2

      Consider the following passage from Feynman's Cargo Cult Science:

      Millikan measured the
      charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and
      got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a
      little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the
      viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of
      measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you
      plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little
      bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than
      that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until
      finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

      Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away?
      It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because
      it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a
      number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something
      must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why
      something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to
      Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated
      the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that.
      We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that
      kind of a disease.

      I think Feynman was optimistic, in the last sentence...

  2. Awesome by demonbug · · Score: 3, Informative

    So how far do we have to go to get out of the Slow Zone?

  3. Zones of thought! by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When this news was published on another news for nerds site (Slashdot is quite slow these days), several commenters brought up Vernor Vinge's novel A Fire upon the Deep . In that far-future musing on the growth of civilizations and technological singularities, Vinge had the Milky Way galaxy divided into various zones which limited how complex technology could be. At the centre, even the simplest machines would fall apart. Further out, electronics and other 20th-century devices worked, but nanotechnology was less effective. Any race moving to the outskirts of the galaxy reached technological progress undreamed of elsewhere.

    Vinge made it clear that the Zones were the artificial creation of an ancient advanced race, not the natural result of physics. This news is thought-provoking in that the constants for life and perhaps technology change naturally throughout the universe. It's not just science catching up with science-fiction, but rather science anticipating something generally unexpected., though didn't Poul Anderson write a story of changing laws of physics too?

    1. Re:Zones of thought! by Daetrin · · Score: 2

      The sequel came out a couple weeks ago, i just finished it yesterday. It's much less of a big idea book than either "A Fire Upon the Deep" or "A Deepness in the Sky". There's some exploration of the details of hive minds and such that didn't get covered before, but nothing really new gets introduced. Very much a generic sequel type book, albeit a well written one about an interesting world.

      --
      This Space Intentionally Left Blank
    2. Re:Zones of thought! by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      Terminal World, by Alastair Reynolds, has a similar premise, but is based on Mars.

    3. Re:Zones of thought! by Dragonslicer · · Score: 2

      Also see Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves. Short version: matter being exchanged with another universe also causes "physics" to be exchanged, namely the exact strength of the nuclear forces, and the question becomes if the new physical constants propagate at the speed of light.

  4. Reproducibility? by n5vb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    '“The thing that troubles me about it is [in] the preprint, [t]hey had originally had a supplemental figure at the end that showed the original results for the individual quasars they measured,” Orzel said. He explained that in that figure, the Keck telescope in the Northern Hemisphere seemed to predominantly measure the variation of alpha in one direction while Chile’s VLT in the Southern Hemisphere measured it in going the other way. “It looks a lot like what they’re seeing is coming from a difference between the two telescopes.”'

    Very much want to see independent confirmation of this result, if instrumentation error hasn't been controlled for ..

  5. Breaks a lot of dependancies by RapidEye · · Score: 2

    Many astronomical/physics models _ASSUME_ that the universe has the same fundamental laws across the entire universe. If this holds true, it will throw a lot of models into question, including dark energy and dark matter. Personally, I find it very possible that there will be variations across the universe, based on dependencies we don't know/see/understand. Just because I see snow everywhere I look in Antarctica doesn't mean I should expect to see snow everywhere I look in Africa.

    --
    "Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
    1. Re:Breaks a lot of dependancies by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 2

      Kind of like how the angle of "down" varies based on the slope of the ground you're standing on? Nah. If the Standard Model says it, it must be right. Expect a huge backlash from this paper.

    2. Re:Breaks a lot of dependancies by cavreader · · Score: 2

      Dark energy and Dark Matter have always seemed like concepts devised for the sole purpose of making the existing theoretical physics and math models work. We have managed to manipulate the EM spectrum and initiate nuclear reactions to produce a crude and dangerous power source but we still have a long way to go and I imagine we will encounter many surprises along the way that will make today's knowledge seem quaint. Of course any further advances will depend on whether or not the human race ends up destroying itself using the advances we have already put to use.

    3. Re:Breaks a lot of dependancies by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Many astronomical/physics models _ASSUME_ that the universe has the same fundamental laws across the entire universe.

      Indeed. It's an assumption that's worked very well for us so far, but it is still just an assumption.

      Much like it is an assumption that we live in a causal universe; the loss of this sanity-preserving assumption being one of the possible consequences of the FTL neutrinos being real.

      Personally, I find it very possible that there will be variations across the universe, based on dependencies we don't know/see/understand.

      If those dependencies are the same everywhere, but local conditions cause the apparent behavior to differ, then our base assumption is still correct, it's just we weren't looking at a fundamental enough set of rules.

      Just because I see snow everywhere I look in Antarctica doesn't mean I should expect to see snow everywhere I look in Africa.

      The rules that cause it to snow in Antarctica are the same as the rules that cause it to not snow in the Sahara. The rules that cause there to be very little precipitation at all in both places are the same as the rules that cause it to rain a lot in the Amazon.

      When one says that one shouldn't expect things to be the same in different places, this is trivial when "things" are conditions and thus effects, and a vastly deeper meaning when "things" are the laws that cause different conditions to result in different effects. It isn't obvious that this is a natural extension or expectation.

      It still could be the universe we live in, though. I worry that if the laws of physics are truly different in different parts of the universe -- not that what we think of as the laws are the consequence of a deeper set of laws and varying conditions -- that this means it will be basically impossible for us to make sense of the large-scale universe. Much like how a non-causal universe would mean we might never be able to understand the universe outside of the range of conditions where causality appears to hold.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    4. Re:Breaks a lot of dependancies by Dunbal · · Score: 2

      we can do a lot of things today that in the past had been viewed as impossible.

      You are of course free to "believe" whatever you want. The universe cares not. Some things we only think are impossible and it turns out we were wrong. Other things are REALLY impossible. I challenge you to come back from the dead in 100 years and prove me wrong.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  6. Anthropic principle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "may explain why the laws of physics in our corner of the universe seem to be finely tuned to support life"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphic_principle
    The universe is not tuned for life. We are tuned for the universe.

    1. Re:Anthropic principle by camperdave · · Score: 2

      Is this the latest version of the creationist argument? I'm just curious. We've gone from "we were handmade out of clay" to "conditions were set (by a vast entity with enormous amounts of organized structure that surely must be emergent temporal order arising from a set of internal rules governing the parts from which it is composed) so that we (humans) would randomly evolve"?

      Perhaps it is. It seems to me that a being capable of doing "let there be light" has got his hands on the controls of the fundamental constants of the universe.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  7. False Vacuum by painandgreed · · Score: 2

    In one of the physics books I've been reading, it was seriously talking about tachyons and that they could exist in our universe. They even said they probably did exist in the early universe, and it was the instabilities caused by them that helped the universe form. Existence of tachyons would be a sign of a false vacuum. They tachyons form an instability and cause a change to a more stable energy state. This energy state expands at the speed of light till the entire universe (or at least everything inside the Hubble Limit) which would mean new physical constants and different laws of physics. That we are observing two different sets of physics might be a sign of such a energy state change, and luckily, that we are seeing two means that we are already at the newer state. However, if neutrinos actually are acting as tachyons, it might mean we are not done yet (although in a fairly stable spot).

  8. I've always wondered about this by MyLongNickName · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am not a theoetical physicist, I don't play one on TV and I didn't stay at a Holiday Express last night.

    But I've always wondered how we know that the speed of light is the same regardless, that the gravitational constant is constant throughout space and time. Yes, I understand that you have to assume consistency until proven otherwise. Frankly, I am not convinved that the last two "discoveries" will pan out and that we've found non-constant constants. But it confirms to me that this is not a resolved question like so many others have claimed when I have asked the question.

    All of it makes me wonder what the mechanism is that determines c or the gravitational constant, the electro weak force and a myriad of other variables that determine the way the universe exists. The only thing that is clear to me is that we understand so freaking little compared to the way the universe must truly be.

    --
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    1. Re:I've always wondered about this by rgbatduke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Explanation: a) "Because it works, pretty much, to explain all or nearly all of the observational data, including things like the fact that spectral lines from very distant suns are recognizably correspondent with the lines as measured in a laboratory on Earth. Note that (for example) those lines are predicted, in part, by the fine structure constant, which is why there is rather enormous opposition to the notion that it isn't constant. It is visibly constant almost anywhere we look, or the entire field of spectroscopy would be inconsistent and inexplicable observations would exist in abundance; b) See a). The problem is that there is a lot of data that is perfectly consistent with \alpha being constant. There is a nearly complete lack of data suggesting otherwise. That doesn't mean that it is constant -- \alpha could easily be a quantity that follows from a far more general physics in higher dimensions that isn't homogeneous -- and belief that it is isn't religious belief. It is that one would rather have expected spectroscopy to have egregiously failed long before this if it were not a constant, and it hasn't. Or if it has, this is the first announcement that may or may not prove to be a reliable observation of an exception.

      The point is, it is best to believe the things that best fit the data (and satisfy a few other requirements, such as consistency, parsimony, and so on) all the time, but not unreasonably best belief moves around as we obtain more data and discover and resolve inconsistencies. It moves around slowly because we have learned from experience to doubt observations unless/until a certain standard of consistency, parsimony, observational reproducibility, and so on has been reached. New physics is always great fun, skepticism is better than unreasoning belief, but reasoned, evidence-based conditional belief, believing the most in those things one can doubt the least (when one tries to doubt very hard), is a lot better than jumping on and believing every half-assed claim that is made on the basis of possibly flawed methodology and revelling in it just because it proves that "we don't know everything" and that therefore, very smart people aren't as smart as they think they are (closing the gap mentally between yourself, so quick to see the truth of it all, and them, the fools).

      Does that pretty much sum up much of the discussion above, so far?

      A sound result will prove to be reproducible and even a sound result (as far as the observation is concerned) may have many possible explanations, including (quite possibly) ones that don't mess with the fine structure constant. For example, the precession of the orbit of mercury could be viewed as a violation of the law of gravitation, and in one sense it is, but in a deeper sense it is not -- gravity is all right but it needs to be formulated in a relativistically curved spacetime -- the real error is in assumptions made about space and time itself, not "gravity".

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    2. Re:I've always wondered about this by bcrowell · · Score: 2

      All of it makes me wonder what the mechanism is that determines c or the gravitational constant, the electro weak force and a myriad of other variables that determine the way the universe exists

      All of the quantities you've listed have units, and therefore what determines them is our choice of a system of units. What makes sense is to ask what determines unitless constants such as the fine structure constant. Here is a nice discussion of this kind of thing: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/constants.html

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  9. Typical Slashdot Summary by ifrag · · Score: 2

    Astronomical observations seem to indicate that the constant, which controls the strength of electromagnetic interactions

    This is just too glaringly bad to not bash, although there probably have been worse summaries. The constant does NOT CONTROL ANYTHING about the physical universe, as that is obviously the whole point of this research. It is simply a number which we have determined appropriately models the physics we are able to explore and understand to some degree.

    --
    Fear is the mind killer.
    1. Re:Typical Slashdot Summary by mbkennel · · Score: 2

      "it is simply a number which we have determined appropriately models the physics we are able to explore and understand to some degree."

      as an essential and elementary free parameter of the quantum theory, I'd say that counts as much as anything else as "control something about the physical universe".

  10. Re:Duh! "Finely tuned to support life" by BradleyUffner · · Score: 2

    It's not so much that that laws were tuned to support life, but that life formed where the laws happened to be suitable.

  11. Finely tuned for life? by Vektuz · · Score: 2

    Getting really tired of hearing this. Nothing is finely tuned for life. As far as we know, it takes certain conditions for very complex life to form, but that simply means that complex life will only form in those conditions, and here we are. If there were no regions in this universe with the right conditions for complex life we would not be here.

  12. But which constant isn't? by YTMDetc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Alpha is actually made up of several constants, as shown in the wikipedia article. So, the question is, if this is indeed the case that alpha isn't constant, which of these 'constants' is actually not a constant? e is the elementary charge. The charge on a proton (-e for an electron). Somehow I think this is unlikely not to be a constant as for all intents and purposes all protons are the same as any other proton, same with electrons. h is the Planck constant, which relates energy to frequency of electromagnetic waves, for example. I'd say that it's a relational constant to create different ways of saying the same thing, so I wouldn't think this is a variable. c is the speed of light in vacuum, 0 is the permittivity of free space, 0 is the magnetic constant or permeability of free space. All three are related by Maxwell's laws. My guess is that it might be one (or all, or some) of these that would be the most likely to not be a variable. Of course, as with the faster-than-light neutrinos, we'll just have to wait for the results to be checked before we can jump to any radical conclusions...

  13. not new; not really controversial, just wrong by bcrowell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First off, the slashdot summary is somewhat misleading, because the result is not new. Their result was announced in August 2010: http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907 . What is new is that they finally managed to get it published in a peer-reviewed journal. You can't judge whether it's right or wrong simply based on whether it's been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Peer review doesn't judge whether a result is right, or whether it can be reproduced. Peer review just tries to judge whether there are obvious mistakes, and things like whether it properly cites the previous literature. The fact that the journal is a prestigious one also doesn't mean it's right; it just means that *if* it were right, it would be of a high level of scientific importance.

    Second, it's not really correct to say that the result is controversial. It's not controversial. It's wrong, and the fact that it's wrong is uncontroversial. Just because there's an overwhelming consensus that a result is wrong, that doesn't mean it can't be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Below is a FAQ entry I wrote about this stuff.

    Has the fine structure constant changed over cosmological timescales?

    It has been claimed based on astronomical observations that the unitless fine-structure constant alpha=e^2/hbar*c actually varies over time, rather than being fixed.[Webb 2001] This claim is probably wrong, since later attempts to reproduce the observations failed.[Chand 2004] Rosenband et al.[Rosenband 2008] have done laboratory measurements that rule out a linear decrease of alpha with time large enough to be consistent with Webb's results.

    Webb et al. have recently made even more extraordinary claims that the fine structure constant varies over the celestial sphere.[Webb 2010] Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and Webb et al. have not supplied that; their results are at the margins of statistical significance compared to their random and systematic errors.

    Even if their claims are correct, this is not evidence that c is changing, as is sometimes stated in the popular press. If an experiment is to test whether a fundamental constant is really constant, the constant must be unitless.[Duff 2002] If the fine-structure constant does vary, there is no empirical way to assign blame to c as opposed to hbar or e. John Baez has a nice web page discussing the unitless constants of nature.

    J.K. Webb et al., 2000, "Further Evidence for Cosmological Evolution of the Fine Structure Constant," http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0012539v3

    J.K. Webb et al., 2010, "Evidence for spatial variation of the fine structure constant," http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907

    H. Chand et al., 2004, Astron. Astrophys. 417: 853, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0401094

    Srianand et al., 2004, Phys.Rev.Lett.92:121302, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0402177

    Duff, 2002, "Comment on time-variation of fundamental constants," http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0208093

    Baez, http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/constants.html

    Rosenband et al., 2008, 319 (5871): 1808-1812, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5871/1808.abstract

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    1. Re:not new; not really controversial, just wrong by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 2

      In other words, if those experimentalists would just stop publishing data that contradict our beautiful theories we could stop having to add layers of invisible darkness to our models. What will it be called this time?

      Wow, welcome to my foe list.

      1) He didn't say or imply that, and prefacing it with "in other words" is just a weaselly way to mischaracterize the implications of his post.
      2) Statistics matter. When one study shows an extraordinary new result that is directly contradictory to a multitude of previously published, well understood experimental studies, that result must be backed by very statistically significant results.
      3) Regarding your dark matter metaphor, the main alternative to dark matter, MOND, was recently quite thoroughly refuted by new experimental data showing that gravity acts the same at both local and galactic scales, as measured by red-shifting of light climbing out of gravity wells (not the usual redshift due to the light source receding at a rapid speed). Dark matter, in fact, has been amazingly well supported by all new experimental results since the concept was introduced. MOND, on the other hand, has been reformulated periodically because every measurement ever performed to distinguish MOND from the presence of dark matter has shown that MOND is untrue. Then the MOND people go back to the drawing board and come up with yet another variation to account for the new evidence. MOND is the epicycle here, not the "invisible darkness."

      --
      "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
    2. Re:not new; not really controversial, just wrong by rgbatduke · · Score: 2

      Sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar, and should be revered by your peers and worshipped openly by your many, many inferiors.

      I sincerely regret the abuse that I'm certain will be heaped upon you for having the temerity to state the obvious and worse, actually back it up with references. Be thankful that at least it is difficult to reach you with pitchforks and torches.

      Ah, well, you tried. I guess I'll continue to skim down and glance at the abuse.

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
  14. Link to preprint by spect · · Score: 2

    http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3907 Looks pretty much like it, for anyone interested. And as always, extraordinary claims will require extraordinary proof, so we'll have to wait a bit.

  15. Does that explain the arrow of time? by bigsexyjoe · · Score: 2

    The article suggests that the change is over time not space.

    The real significance is that it would be the first law of physics, aside from entropy that has an arrow of time on it. (And most assume entropy is somehow an artifact of other laws of physics.) Maybe we can reverse this function, so instead of the fine structure constant being a function of time, time is a function of the value of the fine structure constant and its weakening increases the universes entropy.

    INAP, but it seems like maybe a decrease in the fine structure constant would increase the tendency of particles to emit and absorb electrons, and therefore make the universe more chaotic over time.

    --
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  16. Re:Oh, give me a break. by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2

    Yeah, that could be one interpretation of what he's saying and thank you for correcting that line of thought, but there could be another implication that everyone is missing. He could be trying to explain the lack of life elsewhere ( because the fine structure doesn't allow it elsewhere). So yes,we are tuned to the universe, but maybe sentient life can't exist in other areas of the universe with different fine structure constants.

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  17. Re:Systematics by PvtVoid · · Score: 2

    To be fair, if you RTFA, you'll see a diagram showing the various measurements they had made. I've not counted them, but it appears to be several dozen different "spots" rather than the two that you suggested.

    Yes, very true. And they do discuss possible systematics in some detail. But most of the significance of their "dipole" looks like it comes from a very small fraction of the data. Sure, you can fit the data to a dipole and calculate a statistical significance, but does that fit really mean anything? The reasonable conclusion from comparing the Keck and VLT data is that the method, for whatever reason, is a lot less reliable than they are assuming it is. The four-sigma significance quoted is really hard to take seriously.

    The guys writing the paper are definitely not idiots, and they have tried hard to identify what could possibly go wrong with the measurement. They are reporting what they measure. All good. But if you write a paper saying "We tried this measurement and got screwy results that we don't completely understand" you don't make it into PRL, or get any press. If you write a paper saying "dipole in the fine structure constant!" you do, even if the conclusion is highly dubious.

  18. no obvious errors found yet by mbkennel · · Score: 2

    Of course there could be systematic error, but the source must be pretty subtle. The authors have done a pretty large study (in two "two be published" papers).

    The implied fine structure constant is derived from relationships among various spectral lines not some large overall effect. The paper mentions that there are 6 quasars which have observations at both telescopes, and they used these data to do some reasonably sophisticated statistical checks.

    The best fit to the systematic error corrections between the VLT and Keck appears to statistically insignificant, and the authors also comment that the trend is "different in magnitude and sign for each quasar pair, implying that these effects are likely to average out for an ensemble of observations".

    As far as they've seen, search for internal systematics gives a null result, and the fit to a spatial dipole is at 4.2 standard deviations. Each of the two data sets has an internal consistency and the directions of the dipoles (in say galactic coordinates, not local coordinates) from each independently and the combine set agrees.

    The authors finish with:

    "Qualitatively, our results could violate the equivalence principle and infer a very large or innite universe, within
    which our `local' Hubble volume represents a tiny fraction, with correspondingly small variations in the physical constants."

    That's their application to the Nobel Committee.

    The result is so important that it will need substantially more experimental evidence. I think that this deserves a dedicated spacecraft mission, the way the COBE/WMAP/Planck spacecraft drove the cosmic background analysis.