Fundamental Constant Possibly Inconsistent

dylanduck writes "Cosmologists have begun thinking that yet another fundamental constant of nature is, er, not constant. The constant in question is the ratio of a proton's mass to that of an electron. It governs the strong nuclear force but there's no explanation for why that ratio should be constant. If true it would provide support for string theory, which predicts extra spatial dimensions." From the article: "Researchers at the Free University in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the European Southern Observatory in Chile discovered the variation in mu. They did it by comparing the spectrum of molecular hydrogen gas in the laboratory to what it was in quasars 12 billion light years away. The spectrum depends on the relative masses of protons and electrons in the molecule."

Thus proving once and for all

[Anonymous Coward]

...that God is a woman.

Electron Constants not Constant??!!

[FreezerJam]

Haven't I heard that one before?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869/ [imdb.com]

Ob. Farnsworth quote

[dc29A]

Farnsworth: These are the dark matter engine I invented. They allow my starship to travel between galaxies in mere hours.

Cubert: That's impossible. You can't go faster than the speed of light.

Farnsworth: Of course not. That's why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208.

Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Snarfangel]

...isn't constant, either. Perhaps we can rename them "fundamental variables."

Does this mean

[LoonyMike]

that I face the risk that the first 100 digits of PI that I have memorized could change, and the knowledge becomes useless?

This is actually true, I do know the first 100 digits by heart.

In other news..

[Mechcommander]

Pi = 3.

Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did Slashdot start posting substantive stories? What are they, trading places with Ars these days?

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[fireboy1919]

No, constant is good. It's just that for very large or small values of the constant, it's sometimes different.

1!=2 is, for example, always true, except for with very small values of 2 or very large values of 1. Possibly you need both small values of 2 and large values of 1.

Re:Does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you have no idea where the clitoris is.

Re:In other news..

[frdmfghtr]

Pi = 3.

Maybe where you come from, but in California, it is 3.

Recent discoveries in the legal profession have left scientists, many of whom still linger romantically in the Newtonian world, scrambling to catch up in the field of New Causality. In a case last month, a judge in Sacramento ruled in favor of changing the value of pi, thus acquitting a tire manufacturer of making tires that were not fully round. An appeal by scientists was thrown out for lack of evidence when the small courtroom could not physically accommodate a fully expressed representation of pi. The oblong tires in question were produced at the retrial, the judge said they looked round to him, the defense played the race card, and the value of pi was changed to 2.0.

From "Studies in the New Causality" by Steve Martin, http://www.compleatsteve.com/essays/causality.htm [compleatsteve.com]

So there's this atom ....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

and says ....
"I think I have lost an electron!"

Another atom asks..
"Are you sure?"

The atom says
"I'm positive!"

I'll be here all week, enjoy the veal.....

The one true constant in the universe

[DrugCheese]

is change.

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[firl]

Is that because women aren't constant?

Re:The Dawn of Quantish Physics ?

[adavies42]

I prefer the engineers' version: E=mc^2 +/- 3dB

confirms an old fact

[Anonymous Coward]

Constants aren't, variables won't.

What's all this talk...

[arpad1]

...about contestant's incontinence? Why would I want to know about that? That's disgusting. We should be talking about more impor....

Oh.

Never mind.

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[Quaoar]

Well both the electron and the proton look an awful lot like periods...

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[UnknownSoldier]

If they constantly aren't constant, does that make them constant? ;-)

--
Constants aren't.
Variables are.
  - Murphy's (Computer) Law

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[Bravoc]

Seems to me, that since these occour naturally in our environment, we should call them..... environment variables Sorry, I couldn't resist

Re:Hang on a second...

[Himring]

How does this affect 88MPH and the need for 1.21 jiggawatts?....

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[charleste]

Speaking as a woman ... and I *am* one (that's "shar-LESTE" - not Charles T.E.)... Are you insinuating that being consistently inconsistent isn't very consistent? Because it is.

BTW - you *should* know what I'm pissed off about - you know what I mean when I say "Nothing".

Re:In other news..

[ameoba]

Arbitrarily changing universal constants can be a bad thing.

I remember one time, in my youth, while partaking of illicit mind-altering substances, looking at a window. More specifically, a small piece of stained-glass hanging from the window. Hanging by a suction cup.

A circular suction cup.

This piece of stained glass had been hanging on that very window for years.

Deep in thought, looking at this stained glass, I thought to myself "You know, if I was God, I'd probably round off pi to a million decimal places or so - it wouldn't really effect anything and it would make things much simpler". At which point, this stained glass, hanging from a circular suction cup, which had been there, unmoving, for years, due to a failure in the circular suction cup, fell to the ground and shattered.

I learned my lesson - don't mess with universal constants.

Re:Apparently, the meaning of "constant"

[roystgnr]

Urgh... that will mess up optimization.

Well, that's what God gets for using C++. You think you've got a well-designed system, then you realize that to make your next set of changes work you're going to have to throw in a bunch of const_casts or mutables.

You can tell He's new to object oriented programming, too - he's got this whole overeager class hierarchy of tau derived from muon derived from electron, top derived from charm derived from up, and on and on, but then when it's finally time to put together the universe He gets sick of the whole thing and builds all His matter from the base classes!

Re:In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but Pi does equal 3...
...
...for small values of Pi and for large values of 3, anyways.

Re:So there's this atom ....

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

So a bar walks into a man...oh wait, wrong frame of reference.

FORTRAN

[Detritus]

And they said that the ability to change the values of constants at run-time was a bug. Ha! Take that, you quiche eaters.

Re:Intelligent Design?

[someone1234]

Nah, it simply means God played a lil' with the knobs of the Universum machine :)

Re:Yeah, some people struggle with Heisenberg.

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen you insensitve clod - that IS the point - they weren't always this dense - the density constant changed and now they are more dense :-(

Re:Does this mean

[eclectro]

And yet you have no idea where the clitoris is.

Even if he did, he wouldn't know how to use his digits.

Ten Minutes to Wapner

[Valdrax]

This is actually true, I do know the first 100 digits by heart.

Out of curiosity, are you an excellent driver?

Re:So there's this atom ....

[rsadelle]

A neutron walks into a bar, orders a beer, and asks, "How much?"

The bartender says, "For you, no charge."

Re:Thus proving once and for all

[Descalzo]

You must really have problems with green crap, then. Don't eat black licorice.