The Fine Structure Doesn't Change In Time But It May Be Changing In Space
Fundamental constants taunt scientists. The scientists like to challenge them and check whether they remain constant under different conditions.
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The fundamental constants are one of the largest mysteries of current physics. Nobody predicted them in their theories. We just measured them and put them into our equations that hold our theoretical Universe together. This provokes many physicists and many try to damage or destroy their constancy. But this proves to be hard as the constants remain… well… constant.
Constant Exception
But we may have found a constant that changes. This is the Fine Structure Constant also known as Sommerfeld's Constant – in math, it is usually represented by the Greek letter Alpha. This is one of the fundamental constants that describers the strength of electromagnetic interaction – one of the four fundamental forces. It is a dimensionless number that includes four other fundamental constants in it – the speed of light, electron charge, the Planck constant, and the permittivity of space. And also, the Fine Structure Constant is one of the 20 parameters put into the Standard Model of particle physics.
The Fine Structure Constant is also good for precise measurements because it partially determines the emission and absorption properties of atoms. It can be measured not only in a laboratory but also in astrophysical data that comes from the very distant Universe. These were exactly the kinds of measurements that a team led by John Webb from the University of New South Wales performed. They used a very distant quasar – J1120+0641 – which we observe as it was when the Universe was only 750 million years old.
Between us and this quasar, the scientists discovered three clouds of gas that we observe in the Universe that was about 1 billion years old. To measure the values of the Fine Structure Constant they used a genetic algorithm to analyze the spectrum. This algorithm removed all the physically unfeasible solutions and considered possible interference from other sources.
Webb and his coworkers concluded that the Fine Structure Constant is constant in time – at least in the part of the history of the Universe, they measured it in. But they also confirmed the recent measurements of another study that claimed this constant does change ever so slightly in space. And it seems to change in a very strange way. It appears that there is an axis in space that is being called dipole.
These are truly amazing results. But, for the time being, physicists are reserved about them. One of the reasons for this is the fact that both the studies that claim this were in part performed by the same people. This doesn't necessarily mean the study is wrong but it reduces the independence of the confirmation. So, we need more measurements, ideally from a completely independent group of scientists.
Sources:
- https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/17/eaay9672
- https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/fine-structure-constant-may-vary-with-space-constant-in-time/
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