[QuantumDelta]

http://www.physorg.com/news202921592.html

Emphasis on may of course.

[Mobius]

The article isn't specific about it, so here's my question: do said variations follow a Gaussian distribution?

[achtung]

Considering we've only recently gained the ability to observe the fine details of the universe, I don't find this too surprising. I think we're going to find out constants themselves aren't really constant.

Of course, IANAP.

[Herra Tohtori]

The article isn't specific about it, so here's my question: do said variations follow a Gaussian distribution?

Eh? Well if you mean that observed values of alpha would disperse on a scale according to the bell curve, that'd be expected, but I didn't see any actual data on the article.

The more interesting thing is that the distribution of different measured alpha values is not even around the observed universe - for some reason, the values measured from one hemisphere (Earth's northern hemisphere) are different from the ones measured from southern hemisphere.

Assumedly there is some average/mean/median value around which the measurements are centered, but I don't know if that sort of statistics are very relevant in this case.

[Mobius]

They would be relevant if scientists prove that variations are regular, follow a Gaussian distribution and are therefore symmetric or partially symmetric.

[General Battuta]

I don't think the issue is settled, but I believe the last cosmological data I read suggested the universe was flat, open and infinite.

[Klaustrophobia]

last i heard they were talking about that inverted sphere thing. 

[Herra Tohtori]

They would be relevant if scientists prove that variations are regular, follow a Gaussian distribution and are therefore symmetric or partially symmetric.

Yes, but the measurements are unsymmetric to begin with.

Lets take an example: If you analyze the (absolute) brightness of, say, a hundred random stars distributed evenly throughout the sky.

Now, you would end up with a set of measurements where you would have a gaussian distribution for the brightness of the stars, there would be a certain average brightness for the stars, and the distribution of stars of different brightnesses would also be even around the sky.


This measurement of alpha is equal to finding that northern hemisphere has dimmer stars and southern hemisphere has brighter stars.*

This measurement is unsymmetric to begin with, and even if there's a certain "average" alpha value around which the measurements are centered on a gauss curve, it doesn't do anything to remove the fact that there are spatially unsymmetric measurements of alpha waiting for an explanation.

I wouldn't even be so amazed if it weren't for the fact that one half of observable universe seems to have a different alpha value than the other half. I could understand evenly distributed changes in the fine structure constant - that would still support the generally homogenous and isotropic universe - but I can't figure out any obvious reason why it would be divided like that.


*Of course I'm ignoring here that the location of Milky Way will throw off our example in pretty much exactly the described way, but if you would just look at stars within our spiral arm, within certain distance so that the different star distributions on different parts of the Milky Way wouldn't disturb the measurements, you'd get a pretty even distribution of brightnesses for the stars used in the experiment.

[Bobboau]

other possibility, either Keck or VLT is, or was during the times of the observations, slightly out of tune.

[Herra Tohtori]

other possibility, either Keck or VLT is, or was during the times of the observations, slightly out of tune.

Systematic error would probably be the more likely culprit for the dualistic division of the alpha values.

[General Battuta]

The idea of non-uniform constants is appealing because it provides a solution to that irritating anthropic principle paradox.

It also may increase the probability that Superman exists in a flat open infinite universe away from the current 0, moving it towards Batman's 1.

Superman will still never be as cool as Batman.

[Shivan Hunter]

[tr0ll] so possibly... there's a region in the universe where the "Difficulty in learning OpenGL/GLSL" constant is non-infinite?? [/tr0ll]

Anyway... I'm a complete noob when it comes to scientific matters compared to Battman or Herra, but why would variance in physical constants imply variance in physical laws? Is there a concrete reason why this "alpha" (which I've never heard of btw, so this is all wild mass guessing) should be constant everywhere when, say, the speed of light isn't (in a non-vacuum)?

[Nuclear1]

other possibility, either Keck or VLT is, or was during the times of the observations, slightly out of tune.

Systematic error would probably be the more likely culprit for the dualistic division of the alpha values.

Well yeah, but that's until you consider tha--ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOCAT!

[General Battuta]

[tr0ll] so possibly... there's a region in the universe where the "Difficulty in learning OpenGL/GLSL" constant is non-infinite?? [/tr0ll]

Anyway... I'm a complete noob when it comes to scientific matters compared to Battman or Herra, but why would variance in physical constants imply variance in physical laws? Is there a concrete reason why this "alpha" (which I've never heard of btw, so this is all wild mass guessing) should be constant everywhere when, say, the speed of light isn't (in a non-vacuum)?

The speed of light in a non-vacuum is constant and equal to the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light never changes.

When you hear people talking about the speed of light changing in various materials, what they actually mean is that the photons run into various atoms and get absorbed, then re-emitted a while later. The actual speed of the photons is still C; they simply spend some of the overall travel time not existing.

[watsisname]

Am I the only person who reads the actual journal entry for these things?  
For The Brave of Heart

More to discuss if/when I figure out wtf this all means.


Edit:  Okay, after reading more, I'm starting to think this is actually quite legit.  To begin with, the idea of variation over time/space of the fine structure constant, alpha, is not new, as pointed out previously.  Although many observations have been done on earth (the Oklo phenomenon, various laboratory experiments involving radioactive decay and atomic spectra, etc) that resulted in no clear evidence of variation, those tests simply were not sensitive enough.  Astrophysical observations of quasars, on the other hand, allow us to look over a *much* greater range of time, and that's where we see the discontinuity of alpha.

Back to this publication, if we assume these results are valid then this is quite a discovery, because it shows us not only that alpha seems to change over time, but also has a preferred *direction* in which it changes.  This is not only important for things like String Theory and other physical models of the universe, but it also solves the anthropic principle -- it suggests our "universe" might be part of a much larger system/structure with varying conditions, and so we just occupy one small part of it that is habitable.  Just like how we occupy one small habitable planet out of many uninhabitable ones.  Hardly surprising.

I also wonder if this feeds back into the "Cosmology with torsion - universe birthed within a black hole?" thing posted a while back?  Remember how that theory suggested that because most black holes rotate, then if our universe was birthed in the manner this theory suggests then we should expect to see a "preferred direction".  I might be looking too deeply into it though, I don't know.

Anyways, cool story bro and I wish to see further observations on this in the future.  Hopefully with more telescopes and a bigger set of quasars.

[Mongoose]

Why is it that every LaTeX-created journal article looks equally ass-ugly?

Hmm...well this is interesting stuff.  Way too early to draw any firm conclusions about these individual results, but interesting regardless.

[watsisname]

other possibility, either Keck or VLT is, or was during the times of the observations, slightly out of tune.

I applaud the thought of questioning/checking the accuracy of the instruments, but first let's note the following things

- *both* telescopes gave a nonzero result.
- the observations were discontinuous and made over the course of several months.
- A detailed analysis of errors is included in the publication, as is customary.

If this finding was due to an inaccuracy of the scopes, I'd imagine we'd have noticed said inaccuracy by now from other research done with them.

[Bobboau]

I think the easiest thing to do is try the experiment again with more telescopes.

[Herra Tohtori]

[tr0ll] so possibly... there's a region in the universe where the "Difficulty in learning OpenGL/GLSL" constant is non-infinite?? [/tr0ll]

Anyway... I'm a complete noob when it comes to scientific matters compared to Battman or Herra, but why would variance in physical constants imply variance in physical laws? Is there a concrete reason why this "alpha" (which I've never heard of btw, so this is all wild mass guessing) should be constant everywhere when, say, the speed of light isn't (in a non-vacuum)?

The speed of light in a non-vacuum is constant and equal to the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light never changes.

When you hear people talking about the speed of light changing in various materials, what they actually mean is that the photons run into various atoms and get absorbed, then re-emitted a while later. The actual speed of the photons is still C; they simply spend some of the overall travel time not existing.

Yeah, all photons while traveling move at c... non-vacuum medium however affects the group velocity of EM wave motion (even though individual quanta always travel at c through the intermediary vacuum!)

The group velocity of electromagnetic wave motion depends on the permittivity and the permeability of the medium. Vacuum has certain discrete values for these (electric constant aka. permittivity of vacuum and magnetic constant aka. permeability of vacuum). In vacuum, the velocity of EM-radiation is defined from Maxwellian equations as

c = 1 / (ε₀ μ₀)^½

where ε₀ is the permittivity of vacuum and μ₀ is the permeability of vacuum.

Basically, as far as electromagnetic wave motion is concerned, vacuum is not nothing, as in, it impedes electric and magnetic fields at certain level - otherwise, if these values were zero, you can see that the speed of light in vacuum would be infinite and world would be, eh, quite a different place.


Now, the reason why this has any relevance to the topic is that the fine structure constant is tied to many different so-perceived constants of the nature - vacuum's permeability and permittivity being two of them (almost all the rest appear as well). To be specific, fine structure constant can be defined in following ways:

α = e² / (4 π ε₀) ħ c

or

α = e² c  μ₀ / 2 h

or

α = k_e e² / ħ c

...and the sharp-eyed of you might notice that the two notations are somewhat circular as they use both speed of light and/or electric/magnetic constant, making the definition a tad bit circular since speed of light depends on electric and magnetic constants. The third one is less so. The symbols used in these equations are:

e = elementary charge
ħ = "h-bar", reduced Planck constant (defined as h / 2π ) - h is obviously the Planck constant
c = speed of light in vacuum
ε₀ = electric constant (permittivity of vacuum)
μ₀ = magnetic constant (permeability of vacuum)
k_e = Coulomb constant


This is a bit of a mouthful to use in equations, of course, so most of the time electrostatic cgs units are used, where the Coulomb constant is 1 and dimensionless, and then the electroc constant can be abbreviated as

α = e² / ħ c


...and by now if you have any working knowledge of physics you should see that since the fine structure constant is basically a glue that ties pretty much all the natural constants (save gravitational constant, though it's more of a part of Newtonian mechanics - general relativity uses metric tensors to resolve the curvature of space and resulting gravitational interactions, so its' a bit different than Newton's point source gravity fields interacting with each other...) together, and change in the fine structure constant could result (or cause) a change in any or all constants related to it.

This includes such basic stuff as charge of an electron and proton, the resulting attracting or separating forces, speed of light, the frequency of photons with certain energy (E = hf) and pretty much all equations of particle physics and cosmology as a result.

TL;DR - fine structure constant pretty much defines the, well, fine structure of the vacuum.
 
If vacuum's properties change, everything in it changes as well. Including speed of light and almost all of quantum physics in general.

[Bobboau]

in other words if we can find a way to manipulate it we can rewrite the laws of physics to our liking.

well... sort of...