Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
The gravitational constant appears to vary over time, with a known period. https://phys.org/news/2015-04-gravitational-constant-vary.html This seems consistent in description with a page by Sheldrake, except that Sheldrake appears to try to use this to call all of physics into question.
the fine structure constant, and coupling constants are not constant.
Quoting from that link:
scientists have found that the measured G values oscillate over time like a sine wave with a period of 5.9 years. It's not G itself that is varying by this much, they propose, but more likely something else is affecting the measurements.
There's quite a roll-call of scientific high achievers who became famously successful, then went on to support unlikely or pseudoscientific fringe ideas or make fools of themselves, often in other domains. Just off the top of my head, I can think of David Bohm, Fred Hoyle, Eric Laithewaite, Linus Pauling, Roger Penrose... there are others.There are plenty of people who have good educations but still completely forget about rigour and seemingly any sort of scientific validity. In my personal opinion, Dr. Georgia Purdom is a good example of that.
It means that we can't just take their work at face value. Which we shouldn't do for ANY person, scientist or not.
There's quite a roll-call of scientific high achievers who became famously successful, then went on to support unlikely or pseudoscientific fringe ideas or make fools of themselves, often in other domains. Just off the top of my head, I can think of David Bohm, Fred Hoyle, Eric Laithewaite, Linus Pauling, Roger Penrose... there are others.
Experiments looking for variation in the fine structure constant suggest that the most likely value for the rate of change is zero.
The universal constants aren't necessarily absolutely fixed - there are several that have demonstrated either change over time, or an oscillation. These include the gravitational constant
the fine-structure constant
So small that we have a REALLY hard time telling if these are actually changing, or its just variability in our measurements, experimental error, something affecting the instruments, or our ability to describe the constant accurately.
For something like the proton-to-electron mass ratio, observations of ancient stars have given us an estimated change of ten to the negative 17 per year. That is a 0.00000000000000001% change per year. So, in the last billion years, the proton-to-electron mass ratio has maybe changed by as much as 0.00000001%.
But, what did Roger Penrose do other than try and deny that AI would ever get anywhere?
It isn't zero because the coupling constant(s) depend on energy scaling.
Huh?
In fact, the rate of change of the coupling constant has been measured and it's zero plus or minus a small error margin. The most likely reason for that is that it really is constant.
Would you provide an accesible citation to support this assertion, please.
Can you post the link to Rupert Sheldrake's 'The Science Delusion',Hello,
This isn't a 'does God exist' question, I'm just interested in what people working in the field think about variations in the measurement of 'constants', specifically the speed of light and the 'big G', and what the implications are of this within the study of physics. I haven't been able to find an argument that doesn't try to either pretend the variations don't happen, dismiss them without due consideration or just refer to what someone else said and consider that as closing the argument.
I've been reading through Rupert Sheldrake's 'The Science Delusion', so that's where the question comes from,
Thanks
Tom
Can you post the link to Rupert Sheldrake's 'The Science Delusion',
Thanks Steve
Like the "great one" Isaac Newton himself, putting more effort into alchemy and Bible codes than physics.There's quite a roll-call of scientific high achievers who became famously successful, then went on to support unlikely or pseudoscientific fringe ideas or make fools of themselves, often in other domains. Just off the top of my head, I can think of David Bohm, Fred Hoyle, Eric Laithewaite, Linus Pauling, Roger Penrose... there are others.
That explains something I didn’t quite understand about the relation between the focal length of camera lenses and shutter speeds. I think.
He noticed that, depending on the Earth–Sun–Jupiter geometry, there could be a difference of up to 1000 seconds between the predicted times of the eclipses of Jupiter's moons, and the actual times that these eclipses were observed. He correctly surmised that this is due to the varying length of time it takes for light to travel from Jupiter to Earth as the distance between these two planets varies. He obtained a value of c equivalent to 214,000 km/s, which was very approximate because planetary distances were not accurately known at that time.
If you run through the rain, it comes at you at an angle, and hits you on the front. Bradley measured this angle for starlight, and knowing the speed of the Earth around the Sun, he found a value for the speed of light of 301,000 km/s
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?