Interesting Articles on Physics
 

Laws of physics may change across the universe - space - 08 September 2010 - New Scientist

Fundamental Physics Laws Change Depending on When and Where You Are, New Study Says | Popular Science

I had that there were ideas that the laws of physics were different early on after the big bang, and that perhaps gravity used to be joined with (I think it was the Weak force? or perhaps the EM force?) then 'broke off' to become its own fundamental force.

I had always wondered to if the laws of physics varied in the present across the Universe from place to place, but didn't look into it until recently.

Anyways, although there's nothing being fully confirmed or anything, I still think it's interesting, albeit a bit sad if it limits only a small region of of the Universe to harboring life. Just thought I'd share though.

Interesting, seems there's a lot of doubt about this though; and indeed, even if it did turn out to have an effect, we're looking at an area spanning much more than this galaxy in any case.

Hmmm, the questions this raises...

What could be responsible for this? Some phenomenon similar to red shift/Doppler effect? Dark matter concentrations? Cosmic "bruises" if the multiverse theory is correct? Gravitational lensing by an object in between us and the observed galaxy?

Relativity would explain that we are smaller alpha in the distance, but larger? And a factor of space, not time? What about the fabric of space time can change and cause this? If all matter and energy came from a common source, how is this possible? Weren't the fundamental laws "written" at the moment of the big bang? How can this variation be?

Though I have heard that electroweak is slightly different in antimatter (forgot the term for it), could this be the same for the electromagnetic force, and we are looking at antimatter galaxies?

And what would happen if we travelled to a portion of the universe with alpha variation? Would our space ship fall apart at the subatomic level? Is our matter subject to the gauge forces of the local space time, or the gauge forces of their place of creation (our quadrant of space time)?

GAH!! I NEED TO KNOW!! :shoop: (Sorry, I may be a layperson, but physics has always been an extreme interest of mine. Hell, I just spent about an hour and a half researching monopoles).

The next step should be a full spectral analysis of these examined regions, to see if any alpha variations, if they are present, are causing stellar fusion to occur differently than it is occurring here, and if certain elements that should be created, given our alpha, are being created or not over there.

I hope this theory is wrong though (according to Wiki people have reported alpha variations before but were the most part debunked) because if not, the numbers in the Fermi Paradox could have just gotten a lot smaller. :(

Although I am perhaps given the researchers too much credit, I would have thought that if any of these were the case, they would have said so.

Space and time are the same, and there's no reason that some of the fundamental "constants" can't be time-variant. Perhaps its similar to the average temperature of the universe in that sense.

The weak force produces what is called "C violation" - the laws of physics do not look the same when you reverse all the charges in the universe. In that sense, antimatter behaves slightly different than matter, but AFAIK, electromagnetism is still symmetric when you swap all the charge signs around.

Depending on precisely how the "axis of alpha" works, you might not be able to. All real spaceships are limited to travelling at less than c. However, if you could, then yes, atoms start to break down in various catastrophic ways.

The spectral analysis gets more complicated, because any alpha variation would affect the frequency of any light reaching us.

I agree that alpha is likely, in-part, time variable. Obviously in the early chaotic universe certain constants might have been different for the time (we know this is the case because of the existence of electroweak), and light that we are receiving from these early, distant galaxies seems to validate this. It's just that the existence of even higher alpha means that it could also, in addition, be a factor of space (at least, that's how I interpreted the article). It would be interesting if these variations can be linked to the fabric of space time itself, because it would be a step forward toward a theory of everything, by unifying relativistic space time with a fundamental force. I would not be surprised if there is variation in the other fundamental forces, as well. For example, this could be evidence of higher-dimensional interactions rippling-down to our four-dimensional space time. I recently read a theory that higher-dimensional gravitons might ripple back-down to our dimensions, and appear as several interactions: the fundamental forces. This ring a bell at all? I can't seem to find it now. :(

C Violation, that's the term I was looking for, thanks. :) Has it been confirmed for a fact that electromagnetism is symmetric in matter and anti-matter? If not I think it's still worth keeping it out there for possible explanations of this alpha variation, especially given that electroweak was a single elementary force in the early universe. They may be separate forces now, but can their common origin result result in a C Violation-like behavior in electromagnetism (as in, a common behavior they continue to share even after their own break in symmetry)?

How much variation would you predict a spectral analysis to have? Obviously there'd be some, but would the variation be so great that we'd be unable to identify the elements being produced? Even so, given the information we know about about possible alpha variations (especially from the side examined in which alpha matched predictions of the earlier universe of being smaller), couldn't we extrapolate this information to make a revised spectral line chart for different alpha values?

Theorist, there was a thread about this about six months ago in which I thought the same thing regarding a largely uninhabitable universe. Even if we aren't completely alone, and our nice area blankets a few galaxies, that still cuts out so much :'(

Yeah, that's why I don't know how I feel about this article. It's very interesting, even if it's still just speculation mostly. But, it cuts down that chance of there being other life.

And Tsyal, in my physics class, we watched the elegant universe. (This isn't too pertinent to the article, just interesting). In the movie they were giving explanations for why gravity is so weak. One was that there are two types of strings: closed loops, and open strings. The open ones could travel between universes of the multiverse. And, these open strings were responsible for gravity, so the ones responsible for gravity sorta travel between universes, and something something, this made them weaker. Now I have no idea how to derive this explanation mathematically, I think it may have been Ed Witten who had this idea though. But, I just thought it was an interesting explanation for why gravity is so weak.

I love that movie. :) The name sounds familiar, but I don't think it was him that made the theory I saw. I don't think it was string/M theory, either. If I recall it only talked about a fifth dimension, not 10 or 11, and it didn't involve separate universes, just an extra dimension in our own. This has been bugging me for days, oh well. :(

But on a related note, scientists are going to use a neutron decay bottle to determine the existence of other universes. If the actual rate of decay is higher than the expected decay rate (determined with a set number of neutrons), it would mean some neutrons escaped, and one possibility is that they jumped to another universe. (I've got my doubts it would be definitive proof, because there's other possibilities such as the neutron tunneling through the bottle wall, but it will be interesting to see the results nonetheless).

200-400 billion stars in the galaxy. At an (arbitrary) chance of 0.001% to support life, that's 2-4 million systems. Enough for a while, I think :P

Also, I don't think there's significant variance in the constants between us and our local cluster, which contains a few tens of galaxies. IOW, trillions of worlds. :D

Regardless, it's still a let down. It goes from an image of a universe teeming with life, stretching out to all it's edges (depends on which theory you abide by, I'm a bubble-multiverse fan), to a tiny island. That's still a lot, but all the extra cut-down potential is still depressing. :( I can only hope that 1) the scientists are wrong, 2) the alpha variation is too small to lead to conditions that make it prohibitory for certain elements to be created, or 3) in other universes, there are regions with our alpha.

But, but :shock: what Tsyal said! :P

It's more than likely I'll never see any of these worlds anyway, so it is more of an idealistic desire for the universe to be full.