A Swinburne astrophysicist has leapt another hurdle in the path to proving that our fundamental theories of physics are not what they seem.
Dr Michael Murphy is part of a team that has, over recent years, uncovered surprising and controversial evidence suggesting the laws of physics may have been changing through cosmic time. In this latest move, Murphy has debunked a study which claimed to disprove his findings.
Murphy’s research into the laws of Nature goes back eight years, and concerns our understanding of electromagnetism, the force of nature that determines the sounds we hear, the light we see, and how atoms are held together to form solids. Through the study of electromagnetism in galaxies ten billion light years away, he has challenged the fundamental assumption that the strength of electromagnetism has been constant through time.
“Back in 2001 we published evidence showing a small change in the fine structure constant, the number that physicists use to characterise the strength of electromagnetism,” Murphy said.
“Even though the change that we think we see in the data is quite small, about five parts in a million, it would be enough to demonstrate that our current understanding must in fact be wrong. It’s an important discovery if correct. It suggests to physicists that there’s an underlying set of theories we’re yet to broach and understand.”
Physicists have been chasing results like these for a number of years, but since 1999, Murphy and his co-researchers have been ahead of the pack. They’ve published a series of observations from the Keck Telescope in Hawaii as further evidence of a varying fine structure constant. But, a few years ago, another research team claimed that data from a different telescope contradicted Murphy’s observations.
However, he’s been able to prove that the contradictory work itself was flawed. “We’ve shown that the way the data was analysed was faulty,” he said. “Their procedures were faulty so the numbers that came out are meaningless. Our paper points this out. When you replicate their analysis and fix their problems, you get a very very different answer indeed.”
Murphy has a ‘comment’ about this latest work in this week's issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. It’s the most difficult journal for physicists to get published in, and is the one they turn to for important results in their field.
This latest step is not the end of the road though in convincing scientists across the world that they need to rethink their ideas about electromagnetism. Even though this study also produced results that agree with his initial Keck findings, Murphy said there’s still work to be done.
“There are some problems that need addressing,” he said. “It’s quite a surprising result and one that probably many people need a lot more convincing on. It will take some time, but we’re doing that job.”
