Evidence? Physics laws vary throughout the universe

[avandonk]

There is some new evidence here

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/chancell...t-the-universe


That shows the fine structure constant varying by about 1 part in 100,000 depending on which direction you look.

Further work is needed to show that it is ideed real.

Bert

[renormalised (Carl)]

Yeah, it's a bit of a worry!!!. Going to mean you can't trust your observations of far flung parts based on what you know of the physical laws, because you have no idea what the laws in those parts are going to be like.

Just thought of something funny....here you go cruising along at c out near the boundary of our corner of the universe, when you have to take a detour into the next section because of a "field" of black holes in your way. Then suddenly you find yourself thousands of light years away because the speed of light barrier doesn't apply in this section!!!!

[CraigS]

I think this one came up a some time back (?) I think the measurements underpinning it came from quasars (?) (Because they're bright and distant ..)
Quasar redshifts also don't show time dilation, right ?

I wonder whether they would come to the same conclusions if their measurements were based on SNs, etc ?

Cheers
PS: .. I'm going by memory ..

[renormalised (Carl)]

That's precisely why more study needs to be done on this...to determine what exactly would be causing a variation in alpha. If the quasars are really showing no time dilation in their redshifts, then what is causing that and is it because of a varying alpha, or if there is some other process causing both. Then as you said, what happens when you bring SN's and such into the equation....and then looking at normal galaxies at huge distances. Do they show the same variations or is it something intrinsic with the quasar observations.

What makes this even more interesting is that during the late 80's they thought they detected a change in newton's constant G. If that is the case as well, are they both related....the changes that is. Or if they're not, what are the causative mechanisms and could it also be down to observational effects or the method of analysis of the data.

[astroron (Ron)]

I posted this the other day ,in another thread and nobody took any notice of it

[CraigS]

I did !

Cheers

[astroron (Ron)]

Craig
The Person who it was aimed at didn't Register at all, and no one mentioned it

[CraigS]

Oops !
Twasn't your post that I replied to, Ron ... Seemed it was posted by "Midee (Mike) Gadget freak".

Apologies for missing your post (same item, though).

Synched up now, though !

Cheers

[avandonk]

Originally Posted by astroron

I posted this the other day ,in another thread and nobody took any notice of it

Sorry Ron. Maybe one of the Moderators can meld the two with your initial post first. As any news person will tell you it is all in the headline not the substance!.

Bert

[CraigS]

In the News yesterday, is a rebuttal of the original article on the Fine Structure Constant varying throughout the Universe:

Taking a second look at evidence for the 'varying' fine-structure constant

A few weeks ago, a group of scientists from Australia posted a study at arXiv.org that showed evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be a constant. If the fine-structure constant does vary throughout the universe as their data seems to show, it would mean that the laws of physics also vary throughout the universe, with huge implications. But over the past few weeks, a few blogs by physicists not involved in the study have offered some early criticism of the authors' results.
…
The idea is that the shift may be due to subtle differences in the two telescopes, in which one telescope's data set was slightly high and the other telescope's data set was slightly low, so that they canceled each other out when they overlapped.

Hmm .. worthwhile keeping an eye on this one. "Subtle" differences amongst the different telescope readings, eh ?

Very interesting.

Cheers

[CraigS]

Oh .. and from the other critic's (Sean Carroll's) web blog:

That’s why theorists are skeptical of this claimed result. Not that it’s impossible; if the data stand up, it will present a serious challenge to our theoretical prejudices, but that will doubtless goad theorists into being more clever than usual in trying to explain it. Rather, the point is that we have good reasons to suspect that the fine structure constant really is constant; it’s not just a fifty-fifty kind of choice. And given those good reasons, we need really good data to change our minds. That’s not what we have yet — but what we have is certainly more than enough motivation to keep searching.

His approach is to view the Fine Structure Constant as a scalar field (physics-speak for a quantity which takes on a unique numerical value at every point in spacetime).

I expect we'll hear a lot more on this.

Cheers

[drsimmo (Simon)]

In my opinion, this result is nonsense. Two different results from two different telescopes? Surely that tells us that there are systematic errors that are not quantified properly.

[Robh (Rob)]

The idea that physical laws are invariant throughout the Universe (cosmological principle) is really just an assumption on our part. Our observations are limited to but an infinitesimal portion of the Universe if it is effectively infinite. It is convenient and simplistic for us to extrapolate our theoretical knowledge beyond our immediate environment. If indeed, some of our basic constants vary marginally with large scale distance, then our Universe has just become incomprehensible. Any conclusions drawn from local observation just don't necessarily apply somewhere else. Idealistically, we all hope that this is not the case and that further research will produce compatible results.

Regards, Rob