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Those hoping for a day when the Great Unifying Theory of Everything of Science can 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 an article published in a prestigious magazine. Scientific advancesScientists at UNSW Sydney reported that four new light measurements emitted by a quasar 13 billion light-years away reaffirm previous studies that have measured small variations in the constant fine structure.
UNSW science professor John Webb says that the constant fine structure is a measure of electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces in nature (the others are gravity, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force).
“The fine structure constant is the amount that physicists use as a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force,” says Professor Webb.
“It’s a dimensionless number and it involves the speed of light, something called Planck’s constant and the charge of electrons, 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 buzzing around a nucleus in every atom in the universe; without it, all matter would separate. Until recently, it was believed to be an immutable force throughout time and space. But in the past two decades, Professor Webb has noticed anomalies in the constant fine structure whereby the electromagnetic force measured in a particular direction of the universe seems very slightly different.
“We found a clue that that number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe. Not only as a function of time, but also in the direction of the universe, which is quite strange if it is correct … but that is what we found. “
Looking for clues
Always skeptical, when Professor Webb first encountered these first signs of slightly weaker and stronger measurements of electromagnetic force, he thought it might be a failure of the equipment, his calculations, or some other error that would have led to unusual readings. . While observing some of the most distant quasars (massive celestial bodies emitting exceptionally high energy) at the edges of the universe, these anomalies were first observed using the world’s most powerful telescopes.
“The most distant quasars we know of are about 12 to 13 billion light-years from us,” says Professor Webb.
“So if you can study light in detail from distant quasars, you are studying the properties of the universe as it was when it was in its infancy, just a billion years old. The universe was very, very different. There were no galaxies, the earliest stars had formed, but there certainly was not the same population of stars that we see today. And there were no planets. “
He says that in the current study, the team analyzed one of those quasars that allowed them to investigate when the universe was only a billion years old, which has never been done before. The team made four measurements of the fine constant along the line of sight of this quasar. Individually, the four measurements did not provide any conclusive answer as to whether or not there were noticeable changes in electromagnetic force. However, when combined with many other measurements between us and distant quasars made by other scientists and unrelated to this study, differences in the fine structure constant became apparent.
A strange universe
“And he seems to be supporting this idea that there could be directionality in the universe, which is very strange,” says Professor Webb.
“Therefore, the universe may not be isotropic in its laws of physics, one that is statistically the same in all directions. But, in fact, there could be some preferred direction or direction in the universe where the laws of physics change, but not in the perpendicular direction. In other words, the universe, in a sense, has a dipole structure.
“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 increase gradually the more we look, while in the opposite direction, gradually decreases. ” In other directions in the cosmos, the fine-structure constant remains just that: constant. These very distant new measurements have taken our observations further than ever before.
In other words, in what was thought to be an arbitrary random distribution of galaxies, quasars, black holes, stars, gas clouds, and planets, with life flourishing in at least a small niche, the universe suddenly seems 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 places on Earth are actually a massive coincidence.
“This is something that is taken very seriously and is considered, quite skeptically, even by me, even though I did the first job with my students. But it is something you have to prove because we may live in a strange universe “
But adding to the argument that these findings are more than mere coincidence, a team in the United States that works completely independently and unknown to Professor Webb, made observations about X-rays that seemed to align with the idea of that the universe has some kind of directionality.
“I didn’t know anything about this article until it appeared in the literature,” he says.
“And they are not testing the laws of physics, they are testing the properties, X-ray properties of galaxies and galaxy clusters and cosmological distances from Earth. They also discovered that the properties of the universe in this regard are not isotropic and there is a preferred address. And lo, your address matches ours. “
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING
While you still want to see more rigorous evidence for the ideas that electromagnetism can fluctuate in certain areas of the universe to give it a form of directionality, Professor Webb says that if these findings continue to be confirmed, they may help explain why our universe is How is it. it is, and why there is life in it.
“For a long time, it was thought that the laws of nature seemed to be perfectly adjusted to establish the conditions for life to flourish. The strength of the electromagnetic force is one of those quantities. If it were only a small percentage different from the value we measured On Earth, the chemical evolution of the universe would be completely different and life could never have begun.It raises a tantalizing question: Is this “Goldilocks” situation, where fundamental physical quantities like the fine-structure constant are “correct” ‘to favor our existence, apply throughout the universe? “
If there is a directionality in the universe, Professor Webb argues, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very 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 statistically the same in all directions,” he says.
“That standard model itself is based on Einstein’s theory of gravity, which explicitly assumes the constancy of the laws of nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very interesting new ideas. in physics. ” “
Professor Webb’s team believes this is the first step toward a much larger study that explores many directions in the universe, using data from new instruments in the world’s largest telescopes. New technologies are now emerging to provide higher quality data, and new artificial intelligence analysis methods will help automate measurements and carry them out faster and more accurately.
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