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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: 2416
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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#4. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
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.
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.
Here's Hoag's galaxy:
beautiful
#31. To: robin (#28)
(Edited)
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.
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.
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#20. To: ghostdogtxn (#6)
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#28. To: nobody (#27)
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#32. To: robin (#28)
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#34. To: robin (#28)
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