Members of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia analyzed a quasar located 13 billion light-years from Earth and found that the forces that govern nature are not as constant as previously thought at the edges of the universe.
At a published study, four new measurements of the light emitted by a quasar at 13,000 light years, reaffirm the existence of small variations in the fine-structure constant that characterizes electromagnetic interaction, one of the four fundamental forces, together with gravity and nuclear forces weak and strong.
Electromagnetism keeps electrons around the nucleus of atoms and, although it was believed that it was an immutable force, in the last two decades John Webb, professor at that Australian educational center, detected that when measuring electromagnetic force in a particular direction of the universe appears some difference in that constant.
Although it may seem “strange”, this expert and his colleagues found “a clue that this number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe”, where “it is not only a function of time.”
The find
Those responsible for this initiative used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of Chile to make four measurements of the fine structure constant along the line of sight of the quasar that did not offer any conclusive answer on their own, but when comparing the samples from other studies, they showed obvious differences.
“This would support the idea that there would be a directionality of the universe in which the laws of physics change, but not perpendicular, which, in a sense, the universe has a dipole structure,” said Webb.
Doubting Einstein
In this same sense, the scientist explained that “when gathering all the data, electromagnetism seems to increase gradually the more we look, while in the opposite direction it decreases” in the same way and in other directions of the cosmos the fine structure constant remains .
If this variable character is confirmed, it would question Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, which refers to the constancy of the laws of nature, and would indicate that the universe has the equivalent of a north and a south and is based on electromagnetism variations.
Source: UNSW
