Sunday, April 23, 2006

A constant of nature - can it change?

This is an facinating story I could not resist because I am intrigued with physicists and their contemplations.

According to a story in New Scientist, "Cosmologists claim to have found evidence that yet another fundamental constant of nature, called mu, may have changed over the last 12 billion years. If confirmed, the result could force some physicists to radically rethink their theories. It would also provide support for string theory, which predicts extra spatial dimensions. This is not the first time fundamental constants have been accused of changing over the lifetime of the universe. Most famously, there was controversy over the fine structure constant, alpha (α), which governs how light and electrons interact. Some physicists claimed it is changing while others said it was not."