I seem to have touched a raw nerve with my last post. You wrote:
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Well, Stan, when you become moderator, you may establish the ground rules as
to what is permissible in the way of topics or evidence to be discussed as
you see fit. Until then, I will continue to speculate as I see fit. I
never stated that I knew for a fact that the constants were changing, only
that they could be changing. I never stated that conditions after the
Planck Era would allow for such changes; I was careful to limit myself to
the Planck Era, which we know very little about. Besides, without a valid
Theory of Everything to tell us what was happening during the Planck Era my
speculation that the constants were changing is no less correct (or no more
hand-waving) than your speculation that they were not. Can you demonstrate
mathematically, using established models, that the constants were not
changing during the Planck Era? If you can, then you should publish them,
because you have solved the riddle of The Theory of Everything! As for
"science in its present state of knowledge", you should know as well as I do
that speculation led to "science in its present state of knowledge", and it
will be speculation that leads to the next state of scientific knowledge. I
may turn out to be wrong, but I would rather stick my neck out and risk
being wrong, than hide away in my shell playing it safe and never contribute
anything of lasting importance to science.
By the way, one possible reason why the constants might have changing, even
wildly, is that during the Planck Era the universe was no bigger than 10^-33
cm in diameter. This has led some theorists to describe the universe as an
infinitesimally tiny quantum object. These same theorists have stated that
space-time itself could have been subject to wild, unpredictable
fluctuations. Since the physical laws, and thus the values of the physical
constants, are derived from space-time, if space-time was subject to the
uncertainty principle, so were the physical laws. However, once the
universe had entered the Electroweak Era at the end of the Inflation Era,
the universe had grown large enough that quantum uncertainty no longer had
any influence over it as a whole. Once space-time settled down, so did the
physical laws and thus the values of the physical constants. Hence the
reason why the electroweak theory does not predict fluctuations in the
constant values.
As for the evidence I described concerning the "temporal variation in the
fine-structure constant" being preliminary, yes I know it is; I said it was!
Or weren't you listening? I also described attempts by people to explain it
without resorting to variation in the laws of physics. Nonetheless, the
experimental data is real and it does strongly suggest that some constants
at least could have been changing. So why we don't we wait and see what
develops before you try to dictate what I can and cannot talk about.
PS -- I never told Randy to keep his beliefs to himself or that he should
"drop" them from discussion. I respect his right to say anything he likes
on this list, even if it is sheer speculation.
Kevin L. O'Brien
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My objection to your speculation about varying physical constants is,
I think, well-founded. Let's look again at your earlier post to Randy:
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The concept of the Planck Era is not a theory, it is a fact. It has been
established by other models whose validity have been well proven. Tied
into
this is the concept that the four fundamental forces were combined into one
force. In essence this is also a fact. If this is true, then the physical
constants were not fixed and could have been changing constantly, even
wildly. The theory you refer to would be The Theory of Everything, which
would combine relativity with quantum mechanics. That has not yet been
accomplished, but when it is it will tell us what happened during the
Planck
Era, including the nature of the physical laws and constants.
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Here's the problem (for me) with what you wrote:
You have claimed that the mere fact of unification means "the physical
constants were not fixed..."
This is a strong claim, and implies direct correspondence. I dispute
this. It is not necessary for a theory of grand unification. Of course
your sentence went on to say "...and could have been changing constantly..."
but the conditional "could" doesn't change the earlier part of the sentence,
in which you make an unconditional claim that the constants indeed "were not
fixed."
You certainly have heard of YEC arguments which try to fit the history of the
universe into 6,000-10,000 years by positing that constants like the speed of
light, or the universal gravitational constant, have not always been what they
are now. We rightly object to these arguments, since there is not only no
evidence to confirm them, but evidence exists to refute them, at least within
certain ranges of time. Although you confine your claim about changing
constants to the Planck era, you are still using a "just so" story to try
to blunt the implications of the argument for design from fine-tuning.
Perhaps I was wrong to ask you to stop repeating this line of argument. You
clarified for me that you were not asking Randy to do the same. But still
your speculation has no scientific support, so from the standpoint of
science it is just a personal opinion.
Now I would certainly re-think my
objection if a class of proposed grand unified theories were developed in
which there was a consistent way to incorporate such a "shuffling" of physical
parameters, and a mechanism for explaining which values survived the decoupling
of the fundamental forces. However, to my knowledge no such theory exists yet.
In the absence of the same, I think it is far more speculative to assume that
the values changed than to assume that they were "givens", or "initial
conditions" at the beginning. I may, however, be wrong.
Thanks for the exchange,
Stan Zygmunt