Some easy to read background is available on
Michael Murphy's Swinburne website …
Some interesting snippets about the accuracy of these findings …
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How robust is this result?
It's always hard to tell exactly how reliable a result like this is, but, speaking strictly statistically, our data suggest the dipole signal we find only has a 0.004% chance of being a fluke. Scientists would say that the result is significant at the 99.996% confidence level. That sounds really robust! That's why why we've reported the results. But extra special care is required when such surprising results like this emerge -- extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!
One encouraging aspect of this result is that, if you treat the Keck and VLT results separately, the poles from each of them point in about the same direction on the sky. We calculate that there's about a 4% chance of this being a fluke.
The pole of this "alpha dipole" is way down under. It lies in the little-known constellation of Ara (the alter), just to the south of the better-known contellation of Scorpius (the scorpion). The pole's astronomical coordinates are roughly right-ascension 17 hours, declination -61 degrees.
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They are being cautious however …
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there's a famous saying in science: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Though we are claiming something quite extraordinary here, the evidence, though very strong, is not extraordinary enough. Yet.
No one should really believe that constants are varying until another type of experiment confirms the results.
Possibilities for other types of experiments include making very precise measurements of the fluctuations seen on the Cosmic Microwave Background sky -- the radiation left over from the big bang. Another possibility is to measure very accurately the abundances of the elements that were produced in the big bang. But these methods have their own problems and systematic errors. But we're hoping this will improve soon!
Probably the best chance of confirming our results is to search for varying alpha in the laboratory somehow, perhaps by comparing the ticking rates of ultra-precise atomic clocks. The current best precision is not quite high enough but atomic clock technology is improving extremely rapidly, so we may know for sure sooner rather than later.
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Cheers