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Title: Physics laws flawed (Dr Michael Murphy is part of a team that has, over recent years, uncovered surprising and controversial evidence suggesting the laws of physics may have been changing through cosmic time. )
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URL Source: http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20071012-16699-2.html
Published: Dec 13, 2007
Author: n
Post Date: 2007-12-13 11:26:08 by gengis gandhi
Keywords: None
Views: 1400
Comments: 89
Physics laws flawed E-mail to a Friend Monday, 10 December 2007 Swinburne University A Swinburne astrophysicist has leapt another hurdle in the path to proving that our fundamental theories of physics are not what they seem. Dr Michael Murphy is part of a team that has, over recent years, uncovered surprising and controversial evidence suggesting the laws of physics may have been changing through cosmic time. In this latest move, Murphy has debunked a study which claimed to disprove his findings. Murphy’s research into the laws of Nature goes back eight years, and concerns our understanding of electromagnetism, the force of nature that determines the sounds we hear, the light we see, and how atoms are held together to form solids. Through the study of electromagnetism in galaxies ten billion light years away, he has challenged the fundamental assumption that the strength of electromagnetism has been constant through time. “Back in 2001 we published evidence showing a small change in the fine structure constant, the number that physicists use to characterise the strength of electromagnetism,” Murphy said. “Even though the change that we think we see in the data is quite small, about five parts in a million, it would be enough to demonstrate that our current understanding must in fact be wrong. It’s an important discovery if correct. It suggests to physicists that there’s an underlying set of theories we’re yet to broach and understand.” Physicists have been chasing results like these for a number of years, but since 1999, Murphy and his co-researchers have been ahead of the pack. They’ve published a series of observations from the Keck Telescope in Hawaii as further evidence of a varying fine structure constant. But, a few years ago, another research team claimed that data from a different telescope contradicted Murphy’s observations. However, he’s been able to prove that the contradictory work itself was flawed. “We’ve shown that the way the data was analysed was faulty,” he said. “Their procedures were faulty so the numbers that came out are meaningless. Our paper points this out. When you replicate their analysis and fix their problems, you get a very very different answer indeed.” Murphy has a ‘comment’ about this latest work in this week's issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. It’s the most difficult journal for physicists to get published in, and is the one they turn to for important results in their field. This latest step is not the end of the road though in convincing scientists across the world that they need to rethink their ideas about electromagnetism. Even though this study also produced results that agree with his initial Keck findings, Murphy said there’s still work to be done. “There are some problems that need addressing,” he said. “It’s quite a surprising result and one that probably many people need a lot more convincing on. It will take some time, but we’re doing that job.”
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#1. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
Although the value of a "constant" might change due to shifting gravitational forces and space-time distortions, the underlying relations in a physical law remain unchanged.
If a "constant" chances then it is not a constant. That in itself shows that the physics laws are flawed to some degree. I don't doubt that we have very much to discover about physical laws. Very much indeed.
God is always good!
Given relativity, if "constants" change over time, does that mean they also change over space? (In any case, if they change over time, I think that must mean their values over the parts of the universe that we are presently observing here on earth also vary, as light from those parts takes time to reach us.)
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
Either electromagnetism is stronger in the past (and farther away) or the recession-dominated red-shift assumption is wrong, if I understand this correctly. So, it's a pretty dull dilemma to me.
I totally agree, but the value of a constant CAN change depending on the nature of the universe, including space-time distortions. The gravitational constant G in the Newtonian equation Fg = G (m1 * m2)/r2 may well change in value near a black hole for instance..
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
Perhaps you've noticed that the dark energy question (accelerating expansion) is impacted if the Hubble constant is unreliable. The dark matter issue is not impacted, as far as I know, because galactic spin profiles used to show the effect cover only that galaxy itself, with its narrow red-shift span, of course, and show the effect to be symmetrical around each galaxy. I have a theory that dark energy-dark matter are both impacted by quantum gravity. More specifically, I think it's quite possible quantum cosmological-scaled gravity forces do not follow Newton's law and may experience a phase-oscillation which could include an anti-gravity phase. Ring galaxies such as Hoag's galaxy are suggestive of this, to me. If this is the case, there's no need to separate the supposed cosmological constant from gravity, as gravity is weakened by its own anti-gravity over much of its range, and various galactic spin profiles do not require a MOND-type ad-hoc theory, as it's a correspondingly smeared-out ring- shaped mass funneling effect accelerating matter near the edges of the disk or in spiral arms. Due to its initial conditions and surroundings, Hoag's galaxy has a stable ring. Galaxies with a slowing spinning extended initial interior structure would produce unstable rings that would tend to collapse and vortex into a spiral galaxy, I suppose at the moment. It's also possible under this scenario that cosmological gravitational oscillations could down-shift light frequency by splitting away light energy, which I suppose would involve a graviton- graviton interaction.
I've been trying to keep up with new theories for over 30 years, with only a few years of majoring-curriculum college physics at a state university in the midwest under my belt as part of my BSEE. Physics is just a hobby, in other words. Being able to speed read and having the reading comprehension level and pace reflective of my 176 LSAT score helps.
I have thought for a while that the Earth's gravity must have been much less in the past, which accounts for the size of the dinosaurs. If it hadn't been, why aren't such large animals around now?
Fortune favors the prepared mind. A zombie, however, prefers it raw.
The atmosphere was Oxygen-rich back then, at least that's the standing theory.
I thought you were supposed to be smart, or something like that.
could be. i have read the shumann resonance has changed recently.
Many believe in either intelligent design or evolution...but I am opting for unintelligent design, where god is a retarded kid who likes setting army men on fire and leaving his toys out in the rain. Gengis Gandhi, Troubled Genius
I have a concept of local universe creation where two membranes are twisted and wrapped together like a cloth being wrung out, then suddenly it rips everywhere and all these cosmic strings come flying out. I guess there are these so-called membranes normally spaced apart by quantum gravity, but the ordering is eventually compressed by surroundings. I suppose there's a system of re-priming for local cycles globally, one that involves an ultra-cold phase. With nonlinear gravity, heat death in this universe need not be a random distribution but could instead form ultra-cold superconducting sheets. No explanation is required, let alone a complicated one, for the existence of energy that has always been, in one form or another. Life is the most complex and nuanced thing going on anywhere inside, or supposedly outside, the global universe, in this way it is the cream of reality. Whether our creations will eventually eclipse us is the most intriguing question I can think of at the moment.
I'm smart enough to know that today elephants approach the limit for the size of land animals. The only way dinosaurs could have existed in the past is if gravity was less.
Fortune favors the prepared mind. A zombie, however, prefers it raw.
A warm, plant-dominated planet would be oxygen-rich and suitable for larger cold-blooded animals, according to the standing theory. There are some excellent books on this, maybe I can find a title for you.
Sure, whatever you say.
Fortune favors the prepared mind. A zombie, however, prefers it raw.
If you ever get around to making a quantifiable argument I'll believe you aren't just trying to annoy me with your nonsense.
I'm feeling more friendly now. Let me guess, is it a ziosaurus?
If you use nonlinear gravity, such as the inverse-square law multiplied by a sinusoidal factor, or some such thing, I suppose the spatial energy distribution of the universe can evolve into increased complexity or, preferably, cycle within a similar periodically self-organizing path. A crudely similar process can be produced with cellular automata rules. I guess the spatial sinusoidal frequency or frequencies of quantum gravity would be most simply governed by a light-like gravity quanta mode of infinitesimal mass, and thus ultra-long wavelength, combined directly with the inverse-square rule, which of course naturally arises from the space-filling fall-off of quanta flux density with distance from the source.
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
I suppose red-shifting has something to do with interaction between electromagnetic quanta and gravity quanta which only shows up on an ultra-long scale corresponding to wavelengths of an ultra-low-mass gravitational quantum. What I'd like to be able to do is show a transformation path between electromagnetic quanta and gravity quanta. It would seem to require nothing more than multiple amounts of both types of quanta configured in some way.
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
Here's Hoag's galaxy:
beautiful
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
I've read that book, around 1972. Ever read "... And He Built A Crooked House"? I think it was in "Waldo and Magic, Inc." The guy builds a house that's a hypercube. It was a good read for me at the time, hadn't heard of a tesseract before that.
School always bored me, like I'd get into trouble in trig class for cracking jokes. Liked very few teachers in high school, got a lot of Bs and sometimes worse. Did best in my last two years of college, after changing majors from chem-e and changing schools, taking time off for full-time work, and then finally getting serious about it. Seems like it took me almost forever to graduate.
Yes, it most certainly is. I'm glad you like it. The tiny red galaxy with a little ring, at about 1 o'clock in the dark-ring region of Hoag's galaxy, is apparently manifesting an Einstein ring - you might notice there's a tri-corner pattern spanning and modulating the tiny ring's brightness. Not sure if the region its light passes through is an influence in the formation there, but it seems an unusual coincidence. Clear even-shaped Einstein rings usually have something much closer to them, something that's massive, usually very bright, and slightly off the visual axis. I mean I don't see what could be making the Einstein ring of the tiny galaxy behind Hoag's galaxy, except Hoag's galaxy itself. I believe quantum gravity should be weaker than Newtonian/Einsteinian gravity in the dark region, and that it includes a narrower circular region of gravitational repulsion, a galaxy-generated ring-shaped locus behaving as if it's an anti-gravity source, although more precisely, according to this scenario, it's a zero cross-over point of quantum gravity waves from the massive center. Gravity becomes much more Newtonian/Einsteinian again on each side of that region. At lower resolution, Hoag's galaxy is reminiscent of the Sombrero galaxy in infra-red, turned sideways. The forum software is buggy and inserting paragraph breaks like wild on each edit, BTW.
I've decided it's impossible to add anything more to that post, as the site- server software is apparently automatically multiplying all the paragraph breaks with each edit. Anyway, I might be the first nobody to come up with this oddball quantum gravity interpretation of the galaxy shapes seen here. I am going to name the zero-crossover region "the nobody zone." Can't wait for those internet nobody residuals to start pouring in.
I start with a steady-state universe assumption, because it neatly (and profoundly, I believe) avoids any creation-centered logical contradictions. A steady-state theory also has more freedom besides that it obviously has more time, it can encompass infinite energy, it easily includes multiverse theories, and it can be boundless or bounded. With infinite energy and infinite time a stable global cycle can have infinite absolute period, meaning it can be significantly aperiodic and infinitely non-repetitive while preserving all the benefits of stability and periodicity. Just from a steady-state assumption there is an incentive to question an all-recessionary red-shift assumption, but the steady-state universe assumption still does not preclude it. Most of the quantum gravity aspects I've suggested here do not require a quantum gravity red-shift, nonetheless a divergence between quantum gravity and classical- Einsteinian gravity is apparently the only thing capable of creating a significant distance-dependent red-shift that is nonrecessionary. I suppose galactic-intergalactic distributions have significantly evolved toward maximizing intergalactic quantum gravity zero-crossing zones, giving a red- shifting graviton-coupled quantum ripple to much of intergalactic space. As the local universe (meaning the observable universe) cools from its creationlike phase, the regularity of galactic spacing should increase, along with the intergalactic red-shifting effect. It all continues cooling and organizing into a more massive pattern of multi-cluster quantum gravity-spaced strata until nonlocal universe conditions rush in to re-wind the process. In turn, this universe has a universe re-cycling effect on the nonlocal universe. These different creationary heating phases of the parts are somewhat similar to rain patterns, except that it is not driven extra-globally but is eternal, with no beginning or end, which is the definition of a steady-state universe. Exactly how it all balances is, by this particular approach, at least partly due to a balance between gravity and anti-gravity phases of a quantum gravity wave.
Here's a line-up of some Einstein rings. If the smaller reddish (or much more distant) galaxy showing through Hoag's galaxy has an Einstein ring, it appears to be most similar to the one at the top left corner. I still can't figure out exactly what's going on there at the moment, so Hoag's galaxy may or may not have anything to do with the smaller galaxy ring behind it. The ring does appear to be the inverse of the ring I picked out of the group in a number ways, including brightness distribution and relative light-frequency, meaning it is perhaps redder, not bluer, than the center object the small ring frames (which is the lensing object), and brighter where the selected Einstein ring is darker, both of which makes it seem possibly influenced by anti-gravity instead of gravity. To me at the moment it looks like it could be called an anti- Einstein ring, which is a hilarious idea. Always a bonus. More specifically it seems it could be a lensing that is anti-gravity lensed, a combination of a normal gravity lens (concave?) with an inverse (convex?) gravity lens in front of it. The image of the smaller galaxy almost seems drawn into the ring like the magnetic flux threading through an air-core inductor.
Hoag's galaxy and its more-distant through-threaded neighbor galaxy image again, for comparison with the Einstein rings: It may be the light-source being supposedly lensed there is just below and far behind the small galaxy, and the threading of both sources through Hoag's anti- lens has enhanced the rings.
Thank you for posting those. I don't see how anyone could believe it's all just from chaos.
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
Yes. It's not just from chaos if its matter and energy once went through a cooling phase where quantum gravity re-organized it before it was re-heated.
Haog's object apparently presents the first identified example of an achromatic-type doublet (1 concave + 1 convex) gravity lensing system. I guess one could say it is an air-spaced doublet, since the two lensing galaxies involved are far apart. Seems I am the first nobody to identify this.
Personally I think we are due for a major breakthrough in physics and cosmology.
I don't know of anyone claiming that quantum gravity has always had a re-organizational effect in a cosmologically-scaled cyclic cooling process. It may be I'm a lonely nobody with this belief.
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest“Back in 2001 we published evidence showing a small change in the fine structure constant, the number that physicists use to characterise the strength of electromagnetism,” Murphy said.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#2. To: FormerLurker (#1)
Although the value of a "constant" might change due to shifting gravitational forces and space-time distortions, the underlying relations in a physical law remain unchanged.
#3. To: RickyJ (#2)
#4. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
#5. To: RickyJ (#2)
I don't doubt that we have very much to discover about physical laws. Very much indeed.
You appear to be a major trouble maker...and I'm getting really pissed. - GoldiLox, 7/27/2006
#6. To: nobody (#4)
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#8. To: ghostdogtxn (#7)
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#10. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
#11. To: YertleTurtle (#10)
#12. To: YertleTurtle (#10)
#13. To: YertleTurtle (#10)
#14. To: ghostdogtxn (#7)
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#15. To: nobody (#12)
I thought you were supposed to be smart, or something like that.
#16. To: YertleTurtle (#15)
#17. To: nobody (#16)
A warm, plant-dominated planet would be oxygen-rich and suitable for larger cold-blooded animals, according to the standing theory. There are some excellent books on this, maybe I can find a title for you.
#18. To: YertleTurtle (#17)
#19. To: YertleTurtle (#17)
#20. To: ghostdogtxn (#6)
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#28. To: nobody (#27)
#29. To: ghostdogtxn (#23)
"The Amazing Waldo"
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#31. To: robin (#28)
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#34. To: robin (#28)
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#35. To: All (#34)
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#36. To: nobody (#32)
#37. To: robin (#36)
I don't see how anyone could believe it's all just from chaos.
#38. To: robin (#36)
(Edited)
#39. To: RickyJ (#2)
I don't doubt that we have very much to discover about physical laws. Very much indeed.
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. -- Winnie the Pooh
#40. To: farmfriend (#39)
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