this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
433 points (93.9% liked)
Technology
60101 readers
1854 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The idea of evolving fundamental constants is pretty mind blowing to me. Is this a well based theory?
I mean, it's a bold idea, but I don't find it so shocking.
It's well possible that what we call a "fundamental" constant is a variable that depends on other deeper variables. For instance, an earth-bound observer might consider acceleration in freefall to be a constant, but knowledge of universal gravitation tells us it's a variable that depends on the masses of the objects involved and distance between them.
It makes sense that other ostensible "fundamental constants" are also dependent on the structure of the universe at any given point in space and time, but the limited window of our observations makes them appear as constants.
Sure, but I wouldn’t call gravitational acceleration on earth a fundamental constant, since it’s only locally useful. If something like the charge on an electron started changing though, then there would be profound consequences on the way the universe works
I don't disagree; I was using g as an example of a variable that appears constant under a specific set of circumstances. Obviously the charge of an electron is much more consistent.