I decided to get an online subscription to New Scientist just to see what sort of cosmology news was being trickled out to the general public.

One intriguing article is under the semi-sensationalist headline "Constant change: Are there no universal laws?". It's an article about a discovery by John Webb and his team.

They had been looking at quasars through the Keck and noticed something odd about the Fe and Mg absorption lines:

article said:

Oddly, though, Webb's analysis said the atoms had taken up the wrong kind of light. The wavelengths of light absorbed by magnesium and iron can be predicted using the equations of quantum electrodynamics, but the ones Webb recorded were different.

Their best explanation was a minor variation in α, the near 1/137 constant we all know and love When they went for confirmation of the phenomenon with the Chilean VLT. It showed a potential change as well, but in the opposite direction. Apparently, α is larger in one direction and smaller in the opposite direction.

It's a possible violation of Lorentz symmetry, and as such has a whole lot of fun implications, even though the amount of change involved (1x10^-6 at a purported 12 Gyr ago distant) is small.

Article here, though similar ones may be published elsewhere.

One thing that made me really happy in New Scientist was a short little article simply entitled "We deny the inexplicable at our peril".

It was a follow-on to the prior article, and they summed up their position with a wonderful little quote:

It's the evidence that counts, not our prejudices, even when that means overturning what we thought were fundamental ideas

This they said about the evidence:

When Webb and his team first claimed to have found evidence that the laws of physics are not fixed, they were rightly told to go away, check their results and come back with more supporting evidence. That they have now done. Yet too many physicists still dismiss the work out of hand. Musings that they are "probably wrong" or that there "must be a mistake somewhere" will get us nowhere.

That does not mean that every posited challenge gets heard, but certainly, the exceptions are the way to discovery, especially at a time like this when we are flailing around for proper discoveries in cosmology and particle research.

Well, Obviously I have NOT convinced you guys that there was NO "early Universe" at all to compare a=1/137 to...

But, that is exactly what needs to be understood...

Since there was NO Big Bang...There was NO "Younger/Early Universe"...

Space "Over There" is NO different than Space "Over Here"...

IE: The "Perfect Cosmological Principal"...
IE: There was NO 'faster star formation/galaxy formation' farther away than there is close at home/locally!!!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050310102001.htm

"We're detecting galaxies we never expected to find, having a wide range of properties we never expected to see." Apparently, the early universe was already a wildly complex place. "It's becoming more and more clear that the young universe was a big zoo with animals of all sorts," continued Labbé. "There's as much variety in the early universe as we see around us today."

Thoughts anyone >>>

RussT said:

Well, Obviously I have NOT convinced you guys that there was NO "early Universe" at all to compare a=1/137 to...

Failure to notice the use of the word "purportedly"? :)

Anyhow, I will resist the threadjack. What we have in the 'α (alpha) phenomenon' is a change in quasar-related absorption frequencies most simply explained by a change in α.

Mainstream cosmology will have difficulty enough in this, but the phenomenon itself remains unexplained outside of that, too. In alternate cosmologies, how would we explain that α seems to go up in one direction and down in the opposite direction?

I knew I should have come at this from a "First Principle" perspective ;>))

I can answer all of this...but check these out first and then I will repsond...

http://www.mountainman.com.au/process_physics/index_of_papers.htm#PP34

That is just one of his papers...

here is a list of the rest...

http://www.mountainman.com.au/process_physics/index_of_papers.htm

Anyone even look at any of Cahill's stuff?

I'll just say a quick few things here...

Did you notice...

Borehole anomoly has NO...

1. Motion
2. Emittance or Absorbtion

It is a "Density" issue and begs the question....is Gravity a Constant or does it even exist in Reality at all???

I will say this...

We shouldn't even be talking about QM until the Macro is properly formulated....However that does take us directly to "when a SMBH becomes part of a galaxies life" which is where QM actually begins for each galaxy, and then we immediately get into "If that is where Baryogenesis starts" Then, "How does "Space" get here???