How do we know that constants are constant?

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2006-11-04 04:24pm

This is an old thread, and I'm no scientist, but was wondering if I could get some feedback or references for a layman:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... +constants

One creationist argument I've had used on me is that scientific constants (like the speed of light) were different in the past. Physics changed.

I can't see why they can't just say "it was a miracle" instead of trying to say it happened naturalistically, but anyway, what's the quickest way to explain why constants are constant, or the speed of light just can't change willy nilly?

Thanks in advance, and I apologize, since I don't post in this forum often (if I ever have, can't remember).

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2006-11-04 04:39pm

Every measurement ever taken has confirmed the constants to be constant. We can never be 100% sure, but 99.99999999% is fucking good enough. If the creationist can find an exception then good on them. They may even win a Nobel prize for their discovery. But you have to find it first, waiving you hands in the air shouting if, maybe, or I beleive won't cut it.

GHETTO EDIT: And of course, finding an exception to our known constants will only slightly tweak our understanding of physics, it won't prove creationism in any way shape or form.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-11-04 05:32pm

Do they have evidence the constants have changed? No? Then they're full of shit.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-04 05:45pm

The problem with people like that is that they don't follow their own logic through to conclusion. If someone seriously wants to postulate that the speed of light was millions of times greater in the past (which is necessary for YECs), then he has to do the math to examine the outcomes which would result from these changes (for example, the equations of relativity would all be turned upside down).

It's like someone saying that inertia may not be perfectly constant, so perhaps the universe suddenly lost all inertia in order to explain the Earth temporarily ceasing its rotation as described in the Old Testament. If such a person were not being a total idiot, he would have to ask what would realistically happen if the universe suddenly lost all inertia.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2006-11-04 06:47pm

Actually, it is an interesting question about whether physical constants are variable in certain situations or could change over time. I understand the discussions in theoretical physics about why the physical constants are what they are in the universe are very lively indeed.

The problem is that the creationists put their carriage before the horse on the question. They require physical constants to be different in the past in order to make their pet "theories" to have any weight. It's entirely political a suggestion to them. It's like people who argue that global warming doesn't exist because it's politically inconvenient to them.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2006-11-04 07:08pm

Surlethe wrote:Do they have evidence the constants have changed? No? Then they're full of shit.

Not only do the "changing constants" blokes have no evidence that the physical constants have changed, but there is much positive evidence that the constants have not changed to extremely high precision. The constancy of the various physical constants is a conclusion, not an assumption.

If the physical constants had changed during the last 6-10 ky (and the only place you'll find such arguments is in mixing with YECs; OEC use different prongs to (try to) spear evolution), then the world would look very different. For one thing, if the speed of light had been decaying on a curve on a domain of 10 ky, with an integral under the curve of 12 billion light years, and the curve coming within the fraudulant tollerances proposed by these creationists, then what we should see is that pulsars should not be good pacemakers; for distant pulsars, there should be a steady increase of the time between pulses (Hint: each successive pulse would get less distance head start on its successor if the speed of light was changing as rapidly as is claimed), which is not observed.

Basically, if the constants changed by the magnitude YECs claim over the course of 10,000 y, it would be obvious that they are indeed changing. It's not just our theories would be turned upside-down (like relativity), we would simply not observe the same universe we do now.

wilfulton · Post by **wilfulton** » 2006-11-04 07:25pm

The speed of light, atomic forces (strong, and weak) electromagnetic forces, gravity, etc, could all have been different in the past than they are today, I hear tell all too often.

When I'm not busy dismissing the argument with a hefty dose of "did you eat a box of dumbass for breakfast this morning?" I usually riposte with something to the effect of:

"What caused the speed of light to change?"
"If the speed of light is decaying, then how come all the light reaching us is travelling at the same speed." (yes, yes, but if they get to use circular logic, you may as well use it against them too, not like real logic will work)
"If gravity was much stronger then how come Noah's ark didn't collapse under the extra weight?"
alternately:
"If gravity was so much weaker then why didn't Noah's ark fly off into space?"

my favorite-
"If the electromagnetic force were to fluctuate over time, it would alter the chemical properties of every known compound. What would happen as a result? If the iron in your blood suddenly changed its properties your hemoglobin would fall apart and you'd die, so life couldn't have existed on earth iron wasn't magnetic."

They don't really make too many coherent points, mostly just point out something that benefits their argument and jump up and down flapping their hands in the air shouting "allelujiah! praise the lord! it's true!" without a shred of evidence. Some people are determined not to learn, so trying to pound it into their skull will be like driving a rubber nail into cement.
I submit that if the YEC you're talking to doesn't have to use his large brain for anything besides fellating itself with circular logic, you shouldn't try using real logic on them.

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2006-11-05 09:03am

Actually, chemistry is fairly stable as it's mostly based off of the counting properties of electrons under the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Unless you changed the functional form of the potential away from being inverse square; that would screw things up.

What would happen if you tweaked the EM force is that a different set of isotopes would be radioactive for each element. And gravity would seem stronger or weaker (the opposite of whichever way EM went).

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2006-11-05 09:11am

I'll second Surlethe. Do they have evidence that the constants have changed? If no, they can get bent.

Though even supposing that evidence emerges that some constant or other has in fact changed (as one can speculate), it won't be the creationists who will discover this, but scientists. Because creationists don't know research from their own assholes. Neither will it, as the creationists would like to think, vindicate the bullshit in the bible.

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2006-11-05 05:07pm

I forgot that this particular creationist was arguing that the world was more than 6,000 years old, but only MANKIND was 6,000 years old (presumably in the middle ages, so we'd be almost 7,000 years old by now I guess), but the universe at large apparently I'm guessing they say around 10,000-12,000. So that means the claim that "physical constants changed" would have had to happen sometime within that period.

The other claim that was made was that the human genome is rapidly decaying, and we're heading towards "mutant meltdown" as a species, so therefore this explains how the extremely long lifespans of people in the Old Testament are literally true (200-900+ years of age, and remaining fertile through most of that, in the case of men).

I'm not sure where the latter claim comes from, but the physical constants being different comes I think from some creationist friendly "scientists." At least according to some video clips I've seen, iirc.

It's tough because when debating these folks, you're expected to be an expert on physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, genetics, and the creationist takes on these, AND on what the Bible says/claims (or how it is interpreted by creationists). It seems like if I ever can refute a creationist claim, then that creationist "doesn't represent the mainstream understanding of creationists" or something. It's very frustrating.

But instead of simply throwing my hands up in the air, I'd just like to know about the contants. The replies have been helpful, thank you.

I think there is the impression in the arguer that since these things have "only been studied for a short time in recent years" therefore it could all easily be wrong, and therefore we should just trust what the Bible says (and somehow, what Creation "scientists" have been saying since the 1960's, paradoxically).

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2006-11-05 05:10pm

Well ... they haven't changed on us yet.

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2006-11-05 06:14pm

Presumably the suggestion that they "changed" is to explain why the universe looks old, but really isn't (to fit into the much shorter timeframe for the age of the universe in YEC thought).

Basically it's being argued that since it's possible they changed, and since we've only been studying it for a short time, it could have happened a long time ago and explain everything.

Apparently there is a strong desire to assume the miraculous and then explain it in a naturalistic way to appear scientifically legit. That or else the creationist wishes to show that we have "evidence" (or proof) that a miracle took place.

Anyway... that's the long and the short of it, from my POV.

"How do you know those constants are really constant?" they say to me (implying we don't really know that, or are just relying on the opinion of a few people in recent history who might be wrong).

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-05 06:40pm

It's interesting that they think they've proposed an alternate scientific theory, when in reality, they have proposed an alternate conclusion, and have yet to produce anything resembling a scientific theory. "The speed of light might have been different" is not a scientific theory. Do they think that Einstein's theory of relativity was just a sheet of paper saying "E=mc^2"?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-11-05 06:49pm

Changing E=mc^2 would mean killing life as we know it anyway. You mess with just that one, fundamental constant, and you alter the way the whole universe works to the point of nothing like life coming about.

I hear discussions about this all the time, but to be honest, most of the scientists researching this are either clinging to something hoping they will save face from a previous statement in error, or are just crackpots with an agenda in another area. There may well be different branes with varying differences in physics, but that's a far cry from our universe altering Lambda etc. over time.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-05 06:52pm

Besides, people tend to gloss over what they consider to be fine details, but which are actually gigantic mispresentations. I remember one guy who quoted Stephen Hawking saying that the behaviour of matter and energy might have been different in the past, but he accidentally forgot to mention that Dr. Hawking was talking about the moments immediately following the Big Bang. The idiot actually thought this might apply to a period in time when the Earth was already formed.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-11-05 06:59pm

It'd be interesting to hear how they retcon the quark plasma of the first few microseconds of the universe's life being compatible with Genesis. Matter-energy as we know it didn't exist for a long time after the creation of space-time in its present form, so God needed that rest before he made the planet, not after.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2006-11-05 07:10pm

drachefly wrote:Actually, chemistry is fairly stable as it's mostly based off of the counting properties of electrons under the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Unless you changed the functional form of the potential away from being inverse square; that would screw things up.

Um, drachefly, chemistry isn't all about quantum numbers of electrons. Activation energy plays a large part in whether certain chemical reactions can occur. Unless you can express all reactions in chemistry as a collection of dimensionless numbers unrelated to dimensionless constants such as the fine structure constant, chemistry can change if the constants change.

Taking it from another angle, perturbation theory is important in predicting results in quantum electrodynamics, and physical results in the theory can be expressed as a power series in the fine-structure constant. Therefore, changing the fine-structure constant changes the importance of each term in the final answer. Any other theory that relied on a power series in a dimensionless constant (which the usual physical constants control) would be similarly affected by changing that constant.

Kuroneko can probably tell you more, but the bottom line, I think, is that one can't just dither the constants lightly.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-11-05 07:20pm

Sorry for being ignorant here, but a few months ago I stumbled upon a remark that there is *some* guy at *some* university (don't remember which now), who's basing off his math/physics PhD around an assumption that the speed of light isn't really a constant.

Im no scientist and I don't quite follow all the developments in the scientific world, so could somebody explain, is there such research undergoing and can it be called "science" or is it just pure bullcrap?

Sorry for not being specific with the sources (it was a news item in a polish weekly about last winter), but reading through this thread I've remembered about it.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2006-11-05 07:25pm

Actually, if one were to read the graphs, the strong force, weak force, gravitational force etc. do vary with temperature/energy. Grand Unification is supposed to take place at the "Big Bang" (assuming the "Big Bang" is what the Physicists think it is).

That said, the idea of things popping out of nowhere never sat well with me, given the arbitrary nature and the fact that it isn't even remotely called Science.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-05 07:44pm

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:That said, the idea of things popping out of nowhere never sat well with me, given the arbitrary nature and the fact that it isn't even remotely called Science.

Good thing the Big Bang theory never actually postulates anything "popping out of nowhere". Creationism, on the other hand ...

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-11-05 07:47pm

Well, that depends on the flavour of theory. Virtual particle pairs are some bizarre things, coming into existence like they do with no cause (there are acausal quantum computers today even, which melts brains thinking about).

The idea of the universe causing itself or always having existed doesn't mess with me as much as the idea of a deity doing the handiwork.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-05 08:02pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Well, that depends on the flavour of theory. Virtual particle pairs are some bizarre things, coming into existence like they do with no cause (there are acausal quantum computers today even, which melts brains thinking about).

Is there any reason to believe that virtual particle pair generation is analogous to the Big Bang?

The idea of the universe causing itself or always having existed doesn't mess with me as much as the idea of a deity doing the handiwork.

What annoys me is the way creationists think that the question of existence can be solved by simply moving it to a higher plane. It's like their idea of a "meaning of life", which is to serve God. I like to ask "OK, what's the meaning of God's life?" It's funny how I never get an answer.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2006-11-05 08:30pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:That said, the idea of things popping out of nowhere never sat well with me, given the arbitrary nature and the fact that it isn't even remotely called Science.
Good thing the Big Bang theory never actually postulates anything "popping out of nowhere". Creationism, on the other hand ...

I was baffled that someone who supported Creationism could reason that things could pop up out of no where. Not only is it preposterous, it puts in an element of arbitraryness that simply cannot be reconcilable. Simply put, why not a dolphin flying in the air?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-05 09:04pm

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:
Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:That said, the idea of things popping out of nowhere never sat well with me, given the arbitrary nature and the fact that it isn't even remotely called Science.
Good thing the Big Bang theory never actually postulates anything "popping out of nowhere". Creationism, on the other hand ...
I was baffled that someone who supported Creationism could reason that things could pop up out of no where. Not only is it preposterous, it puts in an element of arbitraryness that simply cannot be reconcilable. Simply put, why not a dolphin flying in the air?

Creationism is based on the singular conceit that as soon as mention God, anything goes. And yet they still want scientific respectability; they don't seem to realize that they're asking to have their cake and eat it too. To the creationists, I can only say: if you believe that the world is a magic fairy-tale place, fine. Be honest enough to say that. Don't spin bullshit and call it "Flood Geology Theory" or some other self-serving dishonest pseudoscience term.

Kuroneko · Post by **Kuroneko** » 2006-11-05 09:07pm

It's probably true for at least small pertubations of the fine structure constant, the chemistry of stable atoms would be qualitatively similar to the observed chemistry (for larger pertubations, not so likely, given that the energies of the electron orbital depend critically on the constant). But that's sort of a moot point, since given a bit of change to the constant, those stable atoms would not exist, both because they would not form in the first place and because of alpha and beta decay (which should be individually be more significant for lesser and greater α, respectively).