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 electromagnetismone 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 universewithout 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 quasarsmassive celestial bodies emitting exceptionally high energyat 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 physicsone 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 thatconstant. 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 planetswith life flourishing in at least one tiny niche of itthe 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
The study of systems, and then systems within systems lead to one answer and gives a headache.
So the only thing we can do is ignore the systems, build a model based on 3 or 4 factors and consider ourselves god.
It’s all relative.
:o)
Right?
“the universe suddenly appears to have the equivalent of a north and a south.”
Hey V. K. Some people don’t glimpse that other reality very often. Others compute reality based on their feeeeeee-wings and their solutions for fixing reality move the world towards more chaos.
Unfair. It does say in that very excerpt his finding reaffirms other studies that the fine structure constant isn't costant. Or how about the directionality of the inconstancy lining up exactly with the direction noted in yet another study?
A research physicist knows nothing about nature?... Wow.
Ha! Are we a computer simulation? Scanned the story. On FR we should have more posts of stories like that.
And I — whatever “I” is — had a thought:
Why would anyone want to control such a simulated universe? How boring! It’s much more fun to wind up the toy dolls and observe the mischief they make.
We humans have this strange illusion that there’s a little person in a control room inside our heads who’s controlling everything.
Alan Watts talks about the difference between spotlight consciousness (studying something) and floodlight consciousness (driving a car). Which one is Me?
And as Watts would say, “You’re It!”.
Did you hear the story of how astronauts returned to Earth and announced they saw and had a conversation with God?
So the Reporter asked, “So tell us about God, what is God like?”
And the astronaut replied, “She’s black.”
Like most game changing observations, This one is likely to be the result of small deviations that eventually will be found to be due to errors or uncertainties in the measurement, or perhaps some known but unaccounted for factor. Its very rare for a new observation to truly lead to novel science.
That is the reason science clings to theories (the term theory doesnt mean what you likely think it does BTW). The theory is usually a very solid explanation of the phenomena it is intended to explain. Theories are generally not overturned because doing so is difficult. Thats as it should be. Science should be stable but not static. It obviously would be bad if changes could never occur, but science would be useless if every perceived anomaly caused complete abandonment of all prior work and knowledge.
The analogy I like to use is to a legal term, burden of proof. The new observation might well imply a new scientific paradigm, but the burden of proof is on those offering the new paradigm to demonstrate that it is superior to the old. Its not on the rest of the scientific community to defend the old theory; the default position is that the old theory is best until proven otherwise.
Science often gets a bad rap on here (hopefully the irony of people using modern technology to claim that science doesnt work isnt lost on anyone). The problem is not really science, though, but a lack of understanding of what science can and cannot do. Scientists are human; they can be just as guilty as anyone of this. Science can provide explanations of measurable phenomena. Science can be used to make predictions about future measurements. Science cannot be used to make accurate predictions when either data is inaccurate or the phenomenon is not entirely understood. Science also cannot be used to make value judgements, although it does inform debate.
An example of this is the recent Covid modeling. Scientists who made these models were NOT wrong. All included a significant amount of uncertainty that was clearly stated by the model. Further, the models were refined and adjusted as more data was obtained and more information on the virus became known, preliminary models proved to be off, but the refined models have been much more accurate. Thats typical of how it should be.
Where we messed up was our treatment of these models by political leaders. They were treated not as possible outcomes but as certainties. Theres no certainty in science. Also how to react to a pandemic is not a scientific question. Science can give an idea of what may happen under various courses of action, but it cannot decide between them. Its a value judgement as to how economic and social factors should be weighed against public health and potential deaths. Science cannot provide a correct answer as to what course should be followed.
Thanks poconopundit.
My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. -- J. B. S. Haldane
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together...We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter. -- Max Planck
If you want on or off the Electric Universe/Plasma Ping List, Freepmail me.
Pi isnt just odd, its irrational. . .
The zero point field is gaining energy due to the latent effect of expansion. As the field gains energy more and more virtual particles are zapped in and out of existence. A photon packet of energy moving through the zero point field in the early Universe would not encounter many virtual particles, but that same packet moving through our Universe of now (in our region for the now perspective) encounters many more virtual particles popping in and out of existence due to the greater field energy. This translates to the speed of light slowing down as simultaneously the Universe is expanding and increasing in expansion. Consider what that slowing of the constant means to the electromagnetic reality of everything.
Constants aren't.
Variables don't.
We assume that our local ordinances are the same universally. We cannot do that. We have to recognize that beyond what we can measure locally, essentially beyond the reach of our arms, eyes, ears, it may be completely different. Until we actually go there and measure again, we cannot know. . . And we have to realize we may take our reality with us. It may not remain the same where we were, after weve left. The observer MAY impinge his presence in someway on the environment merely by the observers presence.
We know, for a fact, that the mass of our bodies WILL have an effect on the other masses near us. So, too, will the electrical fields our nervous systems will impact the nearby electromagnetic fields of anything that can be so affected. What can it change? Who knows. The observer changes what is observed and becomes part of the event of observing. THAT is inescapable. Heisenbergs uncertainty. The Schrödingers cat in the box. Dead or alive, or some indeterminate state? Until the one asking the question opens the box and looks, or otherwise interacts with the box, unknown.
We know nothing that happens in real time. Everything we see or hear is a fraction of a microsecond after it really happens, the time it takes for the sound or light to reach or senses, then for our nerves to transmit to our brains, then for us to process the event. Always fractionally in the past, trailing the present. Close enough for our purposes. Close enough for horse races, etc.
Now you're talking politics, explaining the thought processes of Democrats!
It seems to be more of a spatial directionality. You look billions of years into the past in one direction, and the electromagnetic force is weaker; you look in the physically opposite direction, also billions of years into the past, and it is physically stronger.
It’s as though God looked at the early universe that He created, and decided to throw a sort of bar magnet into it.
Your tagline:
Nowadays, I can’t just fine-tune my shopping to look for the Made In Panda Poop label, since by doing so and putting it back while possibly breathing on it, I could potentially contaminate it — assuming I’m packin’ Panda Poop virus — right before a vulnerable person picks it up right before scratching his/her face.
However, when things are more back to normal, you bet I will be boycotting Panda Poop items wherever I can! Fortunately, there are places where I can start that right now (AMC theaters, Tik-Tok, Lenovo, other readily visible brand names which I remember are at least part-Chicomm owned, etc.).
Penny Makes Herself Look Smart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1OVwLTAzJc
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