Posted on 04/29/2020 2:39:05 AM PDT by LibWhacker
New findings suggest laws of nature 'downright weird,' not as constant as previously thought by Lachlan Gilbert, University of New South Wales
Scientists examining the light from one of the furthermost quasars in the universe were astonished to find fluctuations in the electromagnetic force. Credit: Shutterstock Not only does a universal constant seem annoyingly inconstant at the outer fringes of the cosmos, it occurs in only one direction, which is downright weird.
Those looking forward to a day when science's Grand Unifying Theory of Everything could be worn on a t-shirt may have to wait a little longer as astrophysicists continue to find hints that one of the cosmological constants is not so constant after all.
In a paper published in Science Advances, scientists from UNSW Sydney reported that four new measurements of light emitted from a quasar 13 billion light years away reaffirm past studies that found tiny variations in the fine structure constant.
UNSW Science's Professor John Webb says the fine structure constant is a measure of electromagnetism—one of the four fundamental forces in nature (the others are gravity, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force).
"The fine structure constant is the quantity that physicists use as a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force," Professor Webb says.
"It's a dimensionless number and it involves the speed of light, something called Planck's constant and the electron charge, and it's a ratio of those things. And it's the number that physicists use to measure the strength of the electromagnetic force."
The electromagnetic force keeps electrons whizzing around a nucleus in every atom of the universe—without it, all matter would fly apart. Up until recently, it was believed to be an unchanging force throughout time and space. But over the last two decades, Professor Webb has noticed anomalies in the fine structure constant whereby electromagnetic force measured in one particular direction of the universe seems ever so slightly different.
"We found a hint that that number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe. Not just as a function of time, but actually also in direction in the universe, which is really quite odd if it's correct ... but that's what we found."
Looking for clues
Ever the sceptic, when Professor Webb first came across these early signs of slightly weaker and stronger measurements of the electromagnetic force, he thought it could be a fault of the equipment, or of his calculations or some other error that had led to the unusual readings. It was while looking at some of the most distant quasars—massive celestial bodies emitting exceptionally high energy—at the edges of the universe that these anomalies were first observed using the world's most powerful telescopes.
"The most distant quasars that we know of are about 12 to 13 billion light years from us," Professor Webb says.
"So if you can study the light in detail from distant quasars, you're studying the properties of the universe as it was when it was in its infancy, only a billion years old. The universe then was very, very different. No galaxies existed, the early stars had formed but there was certainly not the same population of stars that we see today. And there were no planets."
He says that in the current study, the team looked at one such quasar that enabled them to probe back to when the universe was only a billion years old which had never been done before. The team made four measurements of the fine constant along the one line of sight to this quasar. Individually, the four measurements didn't provide any conclusive answer as to whether or not there were perceptible changes in the electromagnetic force. However, when combined with lots of other measurements between us and distant quasars made by other scientists and unrelated to this study, the differences in the fine structure constant became evident.
A weird universe
"And it seems to be supporting this idea that there could be a directionality in the universe, which is very weird indeed," Professor Webb says.
"So the universe may not be isotropic in its laws of physics—one that is the same, statistically, in all directions. But in fact, there could be some direction or preferred direction in the universe where the laws of physics change, but not in the perpendicular direction. In other words, the universe in some sense, has a dipole structure to it.
"In one particular direction, we can look back 12 billion light years and measure electromagnetism when the universe was very young. Putting all the data together, electromagnetism seems to gradually increase the further we look, while towards the opposite direction, it gradually decreases. In other directions in the cosmos, the fine structure constant remains just that—constant. These new very distant measurements have pushed our observations further than has ever been reached before."
In other words, in what was thought to be an arbitrarily random spread of galaxies, quasars, black holes, stars, gas clouds and planets—with life flourishing in at least one tiny niche of it—the universe suddenly appears to have the equivalent of a north and a south. Professor Webb is still open to the idea that somehow these measurements made at different stages using different technologies and from different locations on Earth are actually a massive coincidence.
"This is something that is taken very seriously and is regarded, quite correctly with scepticism, even by me, even though I did the first work on it with my students. But it's something you've got to test because it's possible we do live in a weird universe."
But adding to the side of the argument that says these findings are more than just coincidence, a team in the US working completely independently and unknown to Professor Webb's, made observations about X-rays that seemed to align with the idea that the universe has some sort of directionality.
"I didn't know anything about this paper until it appeared in the literature," he says.
"And they're not testing the laws of physics, they're testing the properties, the X-ray properties of galaxies and clusters of galaxies and cosmological distances from Earth. They also found that the properties of the universe in this sense are not isotropic and there's a preferred direction. And lo and behold, their direction coincides with ours."
Life, the universe and everything
While still wanting to see more rigorous testing of ideas that electromagnetism may fluctuate in certain areas of the universe to give it a form of directionality, Professor Webb says if these findings continue to be confirmed, they may help explain why our universe is the way it is, and why there is life in it at all.
"For a long time, it has been thought that the laws of nature appear perfectly tuned to set the conditions for life to flourish. The strength of the electromagnetic force is one of those quantities. If it were only a few percent different to the value we measure on Earth, the chemical evolution of the universe would be completely different and life may never have got going. It raises a tantalising question: does this "Goldilocks' situation, where fundamental physical quantities like the fine structure constant are 'just right' to favour our existence, apply throughout the entire universe?"
If there is a directionality in the universe, Professor Webb argues, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very slightly different in certain regions of the cosmos, the most fundamental concepts underpinning much of modern physics will need revision.
"Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions," he says.
"That standard model itself is built upon Einstein's theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics."
Professor Webb's team believe this is the first step towards a far larger study exploring many directions in the universe, using data coming from new instruments on the world's largest telescopes. New technologies are now emerging to provide higher quality data, and new artificial intelligence analysis methods will help to automate measurements and carry them out more rapidly and with greater precision
This could explain why we are in the sweet spot for life to appear. The other points in our universe don’t have the right values for natural forces to make life possible. That would make Earth a very special place indeed and quite likely forever alone in the universe.
But it seems to me that if there is a spatial directionality to the energy of the universe, it raises the question of a connection to the apparent directionality of time.
For those who continued to deny my existence they would have to have faith in multi universes . Believing in a multiverse is truly an enormous act of faith when mass-energy conservation is an obvious rule.
Our ‘elites’ outsourced whole industries to China in their bottomless hunger for cheap labor. Lots of products can’t be bought ‘made in American’ because we’ve lost that industry. Medical supplies and many pharmaceuticals are in that group.
It was probably a blessing China tipped their hand early - - forewarned is forearmed...
All this is way, way beyond my comprehension. I'm not only not in the same ballfield, I'm not even on the same continental plate.
I'm at the point where the Psalmist says, "LORD, my heart is not haughty, Nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, Nor with things too profound for me."
And I'm pert'near certain there must be a "Hallelujah" in there somewhere.
Bringing that manufacturing capacity BACK to Americas can fuel one heck of a recovery boom, albeit a slow starter but it gains ‘yuge’ momentum.
Stay safe, be well. Don’t let the chicomfu get you down.
Nonetheless, I will do my best.
I found Max Planck's wikiquotes page and here are two other quotes that resonated for me:
Now I think this joy of scientific discovery is something that extends to all kinds of human labor and achievement. For instance:
And finally, in a poet's words:
Your sickness, they say, and your puny habit, require that thou do this or avoid that, but know that thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish that stint. Thou art sick, but shalt not be worse, and the universe, which holds thee dear, shall be the better.
We must be very suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life.
We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him.
Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! -- it seems to say, -- there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power."
Love the quotes.
I just watched some series about inventors, and the subject of that episode was the guy who transmitted the first image wirelessly.
IIRC, they way they told it, the guy thought the thing up his mind, build an elaborate machine to test the theory on, and the first time he turned it on...it worked, and transmitted an image.
But the thing was...as I watched it, not knowing the story, I thought “It is going to work on the first try!” and damned if it didn’t.
For most things, there is much trial and error. You fail, then look at it, figure out why, and try to figure out how not to do that again. But it is almost always some other thing. And you fix that, and so on.
This guy THOUGHT of it, and just...seemed to KNOW it was going to work.
Astonishing.
This wasn’t Philo Farnsworth plowing a line of light across a screen the same way he plowed a field?
Inventors and their creations.
One movie from years ago which still lingers in mind after all these years: “Young Tom Edison”, starring a youthful Mickey Rooney. Edison gave humanity more than he could ever imagine.
I think his name was Baird...
It’s interesting this story of the first image transmitted wirelessly.
Now perhaps he knew it would work because there’s great similarity between sending an image on a local network — computer to computer — and sending it wirelessly.
An image is nothing more than a series of information packets that are created on one end and reassembled on the other.
And those information packets are nothing but text which represents the colors of the pixels on your screen.
The trick with wireless is (probably) to ensure all the packets arrive because they are subject to all sorts of noise and interference.
Of course, Thomas Edison actually created a science for inventing things. He was the first to create an electric laboratory. He owned over 1,000 U.S. patents.
I like that - I’m going to work on it too.
Having our own industries back would make the country feel better too... it would hurt the greedy horrible elites... but they'll just have to get over it.
Thanks! The Planck quote appeared in a slightly different form in a book he wrote, but I believe it originated in his Nobel acceptance speech.
It doesn't explain it, because the Earth wasn't like it is now at any other point. Take "Rare Earth" and throw it into the trash where it belongs.
How many years has SETI been looking and found squat? Earth is a rare place. We assume elemental oxygen is a normal condition but seeing as how only fluorine is more reactive it’s amazing that somehow oxygen became 20% of the atmosphere. The mass of the moon is close enough to Earth’s to keep the tilt stable. There are other conditions as well but you get the point.
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