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I have always had one question about defining measurements in terms of universal constants. Perhaps it is a silly one. What if universal constants are, in the

I have always had one question about defining measurements in terms of universal constants. Perhaps it is a silly one. What if universal constants are, in the long run, variable? What if over the course of 500 years the speed of light, or the strength of gravity, changes? If the measurements used to define these constants are defined in terms of the constants themselves, how would we see change? Perhaps this is a silly question in practice. If so, I would be interested in the 'theoretical' or hypothetical answer for a world where traditional measures of the kilogram and second have been forgotten.

lmm 9y ago
If the universe was just a sequence of random arrangements of random phenomena, then no physics would be possible - there would be no reproducible experiments, and so no way to predict the future based on the present. Specific things may be variables rather than constants, but we can only ever define that in relation to some other constant. If the hyperfine transition of the cesium-133 atom starts taking longer, how could we measure that, except in relation to some other periodic activity, e.g. the hyperfine transition of hydrogen atoms (or, if we go back to Galileo, human heartbeats)? So we could equally say that the hydrogen transition has got faster or the cesium transition has got slower. Now if 111 elements "agreed" on how fast time was passing and one other element differed, it would probably make sense to say that it was the one element whose transitions were slowing down rather than the 111 elements whose transitions were speeding up. But ultimately there is no single objective measure of time in the universe; rather there are a number of periodic patterns in the universe that are mostly consistent with each other, and most easily explained by there being a single, consensus concept of time passing. If one particular pattern starts going against that consensus, it makes sense to say that that particular pattern is changing, and since we want our definition of the passage of time to agree with the consensus, if the pattern that changed happened to be the "official" definition of time (hyperfine transitions of cesium-133) then we would almost certainly just switch to a different pattern in nature that followed the consensus. But if the consensus itself broke down, well, at that point it no longer makes sense to talk about a single concept of "time" - rather we'd have to talk about the specific patterns we were talking about. And if the patterns went away entirely, physics itself would become impossible.
- balabaster 9y ago
  In relative terms I agree. However, what if some outside force were causing the 111 elements transitions to speed up, but that outside force had no effect on the 1 who was immune to that cause? How can we ever be sure of anything? If we go into things assuming that the 111 elements are correct and the 1 was incorrect, we could be tying ourselves to assumptions that may be invalid. Think to Geordie's epiphany: "It never occurred to me that space was the thing that was moving."
  - fixermark 9y ago
    That concept of surety we cannot grasp with the observation tools we have available, but it's also not necessary to grasp it; the assumption that the 1 element was changing rather than the 111 only becomes functionally "incorrect" if it contradicts some other observation we make. Beyond that, the grand truth of what's actually happening becomes a bit uselessly murky. The real function of Occam's Razor is to allow us to simplify models for our own benefit (because simpler models are easier to interpret and use), not necessarily because the simple answer is the Actual Truth(TM), which we can't know outside of observation. There's a thought experiment in college philosophy: how do you know the universe wasn't created from nothing precisely six seconds ago, with all matter and energy in the universe arranged with the precise concentrations and momenta they would need to become the present universe in precisely six seconds?
    - Bromskloss 9y ago
      > The real function of Occam's Razor is to allow us to simplify models for our own benefit (because simpler models are easier to interpret and use), not necessarily because the simple answer is the Actual Truth(TM), which we can't know outside of observation. What about assigning greater prior probability to hypotheses that are simpler in some sense? Is there perhaps something to that too?
      - lmm 9y ago
        I'd say it's legitimate, just because simpler models have turned out to be true more often in the past, as best as we can tell.
majewsky 9y ago
We have not yet seen any indication that universal constants (or any other laws of physics) would change over time, therefore Occam's Razor suggest that we continue with the assumption that they don't until contrary evidence appears. > If the measurements used to define these constants are defined in terms of the constants themselves, how would we see change? Either the constants change such that we can measure the effect (e.g. the mass of atoms changes but the calibration of scales does not change accordingly), or they change such that our measurement apparatuses are equally affected. In the latter case, we will not be able to see the change, but then again, you could go into epistemology and argue that nothing has happened at all.
- fixermark 9y ago
  Yep. Too far down this road, and you arrive at Wolfram's observation that, hypothetically, the entire universe could be a simulation running as a cellular automaton with a single updating agent stepping the state of the universe interaction-by-interaction. It could take an arbitrarily-long time to run one "step" of the universe in that agent's timeframe, and life existing in that universe would have no way of knowing, because all of our processes for measuring time await the touch of that updating agent to progress.
thesehands 9y ago
Interesting question, in that kilogram & second are only really handy ways for humans to be able to compare things to other things reliably. Using constants is presumably a more reliable way for the higher level comparisons to be reproducible. It's turtles all the way down...
agentgt 9y ago
Somewhat related but I believe there is some discussion that non observable parts of the universe (i.e. Really far away) may behave differently. Unfortunately these outer/early edges are going faster than the speed of light (I think) so we will probably never know.
- dpark 9y ago
  Any such discussion is entirely in the realm of not science. Non-observable means not falsifiable means not science. Saying the non-observable universe is going faster than the speed of light is like saying God’s beard is orange.
  - agentgt 9y ago
    Ok briefly observable but not anymore and never will be. And galaxies can move faster than the speed of light: https://m.phys.org/news/2015-10-galaxies-faster.html https://m.phys.org/news/2015-10-galaxies-faster.html I was going to correct that technicality on observable but was on mobile earlier. Also you can absolutely have a theory that explains the observable universe reliably (i.e. Verifiable) but at the same time makes suggestions about the unobservable universe (for example most cosmos theories say the actual universe is bigger than the observable). We just don't have the technology or time to observe it yet.
    - dpark 9y ago
      Your link clarifies the statement. Space is expanding. Galaxies aren't actually moving FTL.
      - agentgt 9y ago
        Yes I meant we can't see or go there because it's expanding / moving faster than we can get there (light).... I'm still not sure if I'm completely wrong or just misunderstood (given the downvote).
mabbo 9y ago
If the universal constants change, we have far more to worry about than our measurements being inaccurate. Also, we can view the past for many of these constants (gravity, for example) by looking in telescopes to places many millions or billions of light years away- and what we see reflects gravity and the speed of light being the same as it was then. Why would it change now? Occam's Razor applies.
- nonbel 9y ago
  >"we can view the past for many of these constants (gravity, for example) by looking in telescopes to places many millions or billions of light years away- and what we see reflects gravity and the speed of light being the same as it was then." Isn't this circular? The concept of a light year (and the determination of how far you are looking into the past, etc) assumes a constant speed of light.
  - xenophonf 9y ago
    Actually, the determination of how far you are looking into the past depends on both the constant speed of light _and_ the accelerating metric expansion of space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space
  - shagie 9y ago
    There are also phenomena such as the natural fission reactor at Oklo that demonstrates that the fine structure constant hasn’t changed over the past 2b years. Part of the definition of this constant is c and pi. It is very hard to alter one constant without altering another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
  - fixermark 9y ago
    It's circular-ish, but we also see alignment in observable cosmic phenomena that strongly suggest the constants hold (such as the periodicity of pulsars being related to how fast they are moving relative to us, which we can measure via redshift).
pducks32 9y ago
Someone already provided a better answer than I can but just as another example. Constants can sometimes be a tricky name because in programming we think of constants as having a set value, but that’s not entirely what physicists mean. They mean values that have no units. Pure numbers as it were. Sure these may change or we may measure them better but by redefining our units in terms of these constants we kinda sidestep that. There isn’t anything to measure if that makes sense. The only thing to measure is what a meter is.
- scentoni 9y ago
  That isn't the case. Most physical constants do have units, such as G=6.67408(31)×10^−11 m^3⋅kg^−1⋅s^−2
ISL 9y ago
First, people look really hard to discern whether or not the constants are constant. So far, they are. See [1-3] for quick examples. Second, if the constants were changing, we could simply reference to the value of the constant on a certain date. As the rate of change is now guaranteed by existing experiments to be small, any shift would be very tiny, and easily calculable. The question of the constancy of constants remains a very good one. That question is, by its very nature, its own constant of science. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00560 https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00560 [2] https://www.nist.gov/publications/precision-atomic-spectroscopy-improved-limits-variation-fine-structure-constant-and https://www.nist.gov/publications/precision-atomic-spectrosc... [3] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/24/17/017/meta http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/24/17/01...
stan_rogers 9y ago
The traditional values are no better. The metre is traditionally defined as one ten-millionth part of the distance between the geographic north pole and the equator along the Paris meridian. The planet does, and will continue to, slightly change its shape for the same reason that the traditional second - the sixtieth part of the sixtieth part of the twenty-fourth part of a day - has gotten quite a bit longer. The gram is traditionally defined as the mass of a cubic centimeter (or millilitre) of water at a specific temperature and pressure (and let's hope that we don't see changes in the behaviour of water molecules over time as well). There's a sort of mythos about the metric system being all "sciency", but it's just as arbitrary as any other system when you get right down to it. A metre is one ten-millionth part of an arbitrarily selected measureable distance because, well, it's "about yay big", close enough to the yard (an ad hoc body measurement) everyone had been using anyway. (The nearest familiar alternatives would have been either two rods or a hand, or the French equivalents.) It's just easier to do the math in a lot of cases because base ten. Anchoring the values to something anyone can, in principle, measure anywhere in any reference frame, at least makes sure that we're all talking about the same thing - even if that thing changes. That said, there's no evidence for the proposition that they do change, and quite a bit to suggest they don't.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jean-bonneau 9y ago
  > The metre is traditionally defined as one ten-millionth part of the distance between the geographic north pole and the equator along the Paris meridian. Not anymore: "The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 seconds." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre
QAPereo 9y ago
You should read Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem I think you’d enjoy it.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
In the case of the meter it definitely is. Space time is stretching so the meter will slowly get longer, but you won't notice

lmm 9y ago

If the universe was just a sequence of random arrangements of random phenomena, then no physics would be possible - there would be no reproducible experiments, and so no way to predict the future based on the present. Specific things may be variables rather than constants, but we can only ever define that in relation to some other constant. If the hyperfine transition of the cesium-133 atom starts taking longer, how could we measure that, except in relation to some other periodic activity, e.g. the hyperfine transition of hydrogen atoms (or, if we go back to Galileo, human heartbeats)? So we could equally say that the hydrogen transition has got faster or the cesium transition has got slower. Now if 111 elements "agreed" on how fast time was passing and one other element differed, it would probably make sense to say that it was the one element whose transitions were slowing down rather than the 111 elements whose transitions were speeding up. But ultimately there is no single objective measure of time in the universe; rather there are a number of periodic patterns in the universe that are mostly consistent with each other, and most easily explained by there being a single, consensus concept of time passing. If one particular pattern starts going against that consensus, it makes sense to say that that particular pattern is changing, and since we want our definition of the passage of time to agree with the consensus, if the pattern that changed happened to be the "official" definition of time (hyperfine transitions of cesium-133) then we would almost certainly just switch to a different pattern in nature that followed the consensus. But if the consensus itself broke down, well, at that point it no longer makes sense to talk about a single concept of "time" - rather we'd have to talk about the specific patterns we were talking about. And if the patterns went away entirely, physics itself would become impossible.

balabaster 9y ago
In relative terms I agree. However, what if some outside force were causing the 111 elements transitions to speed up, but that outside force had no effect on the 1 who was immune to that cause? How can we ever be sure of anything? If we go into things assuming that the 111 elements are correct and the 1 was incorrect, we could be tying ourselves to assumptions that may be invalid. Think to Geordie's epiphany: "It never occurred to me that space was the thing that was moving."
- fixermark 9y ago
  That concept of surety we cannot grasp with the observation tools we have available, but it's also not necessary to grasp it; the assumption that the 1 element was changing rather than the 111 only becomes functionally "incorrect" if it contradicts some other observation we make. Beyond that, the grand truth of what's actually happening becomes a bit uselessly murky. The real function of Occam's Razor is to allow us to simplify models for our own benefit (because simpler models are easier to interpret and use), not necessarily because the simple answer is the Actual Truth(TM), which we can't know outside of observation. There's a thought experiment in college philosophy: how do you know the universe wasn't created from nothing precisely six seconds ago, with all matter and energy in the universe arranged with the precise concentrations and momenta they would need to become the present universe in precisely six seconds?
  - Bromskloss 9y ago
    > The real function of Occam's Razor is to allow us to simplify models for our own benefit (because simpler models are easier to interpret and use), not necessarily because the simple answer is the Actual Truth(TM), which we can't know outside of observation. What about assigning greater prior probability to hypotheses that are simpler in some sense? Is there perhaps something to that too?
    - lmm 9y ago
      I'd say it's legitimate, just because simpler models have turned out to be true more often in the past, as best as we can tell.

majewsky 9y ago

We have not yet seen any indication that universal constants (or any other laws of physics) would change over time, therefore Occam's Razor suggest that we continue with the assumption that they don't until contrary evidence appears. > If the measurements used to define these constants are defined in terms of the constants themselves, how would we see change? Either the constants change such that we can measure the effect (e.g. the mass of atoms changes but the calibration of scales does not change accordingly), or they change such that our measurement apparatuses are equally affected. In the latter case, we will not be able to see the change, but then again, you could go into epistemology and argue that nothing has happened at all.

fixermark 9y ago
Yep. Too far down this road, and you arrive at Wolfram's observation that, hypothetically, the entire universe could be a simulation running as a cellular automaton with a single updating agent stepping the state of the universe interaction-by-interaction. It could take an arbitrarily-long time to run one "step" of the universe in that agent's timeframe, and life existing in that universe would have no way of knowing, because all of our processes for measuring time await the touch of that updating agent to progress.

thesehands 9y ago

Interesting question, in that kilogram & second are only really handy ways for humans to be able to compare things to other things reliably. Using constants is presumably a more reliable way for the higher level comparisons to be reproducible. It's turtles all the way down...

agentgt 9y ago

Somewhat related but I believe there is some discussion that non observable parts of the universe (i.e. Really far away) may behave differently. Unfortunately these outer/early edges are going faster than the speed of light (I think) so we will probably never know.

dpark 9y ago
Any such discussion is entirely in the realm of not science. Non-observable means not falsifiable means not science. Saying the non-observable universe is going faster than the speed of light is like saying God’s beard is orange.
- agentgt 9y ago
  Ok briefly observable but not anymore and never will be. And galaxies can move faster than the speed of light: https://m.phys.org/news/2015-10-galaxies-faster.html https://m.phys.org/news/2015-10-galaxies-faster.html I was going to correct that technicality on observable but was on mobile earlier. Also you can absolutely have a theory that explains the observable universe reliably (i.e. Verifiable) but at the same time makes suggestions about the unobservable universe (for example most cosmos theories say the actual universe is bigger than the observable). We just don't have the technology or time to observe it yet.
  - dpark 9y ago
    Your link clarifies the statement. Space is expanding. Galaxies aren't actually moving FTL.
    - agentgt 9y ago
      Yes I meant we can't see or go there because it's expanding / moving faster than we can get there (light).... I'm still not sure if I'm completely wrong or just misunderstood (given the downvote).

mabbo 9y ago

If the universal constants change, we have far more to worry about than our measurements being inaccurate. Also, we can view the past for many of these constants (gravity, for example) by looking in telescopes to places many millions or billions of light years away- and what we see reflects gravity and the speed of light being the same as it was then. Why would it change now? Occam's Razor applies.

nonbel 9y ago
>"we can view the past for many of these constants (gravity, for example) by looking in telescopes to places many millions or billions of light years away- and what we see reflects gravity and the speed of light being the same as it was then." Isn't this circular? The concept of a light year (and the determination of how far you are looking into the past, etc) assumes a constant speed of light.
- xenophonf 9y ago
  Actually, the determination of how far you are looking into the past depends on both the constant speed of light _and_ the accelerating metric expansion of space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space
- shagie 9y ago
  There are also phenomena such as the natural fission reactor at Oklo that demonstrates that the fine structure constant hasn’t changed over the past 2b years. Part of the definition of this constant is c and pi. It is very hard to alter one constant without altering another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
- fixermark 9y ago
  It's circular-ish, but we also see alignment in observable cosmic phenomena that strongly suggest the constants hold (such as the periodicity of pulsars being related to how fast they are moving relative to us, which we can measure via redshift).

pducks32 9y ago

Someone already provided a better answer than I can but just as another example. Constants can sometimes be a tricky name because in programming we think of constants as having a set value, but that’s not entirely what physicists mean. They mean values that have no units. Pure numbers as it were. Sure these may change or we may measure them better but by redefining our units in terms of these constants we kinda sidestep that. There isn’t anything to measure if that makes sense. The only thing to measure is what a meter is.

scentoni 9y ago
That isn't the case. Most physical constants do have units, such as G=6.67408(31)×10^−11 m^3⋅kg^−1⋅s^−2

ISL 9y ago

First, people look really hard to discern whether or not the constants are constant. So far, they are. See [1-3] for quick examples. Second, if the constants were changing, we could simply reference to the value of the constant on a certain date. As the rate of change is now guaranteed by existing experiments to be small, any shift would be very tiny, and easily calculable. The question of the constancy of constants remains a very good one. That question is, by its very nature, its own constant of science. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00560 https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00560 [2] https://www.nist.gov/publications/precision-atomic-spectroscopy-improved-limits-variation-fine-structure-constant-and https://www.nist.gov/publications/precision-atomic-spectrosc... [3] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/24/17/017/meta http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/24/17/01...

stan_rogers 9y ago

The traditional values are no better. The metre is traditionally defined as one ten-millionth part of the distance between the geographic north pole and the equator along the Paris meridian. The planet does, and will continue to, slightly change its shape for the same reason that the traditional second - the sixtieth part of the sixtieth part of the twenty-fourth part of a day - has gotten quite a bit longer. The gram is traditionally defined as the mass of a cubic centimeter (or millilitre) of water at a specific temperature and pressure (and let's hope that we don't see changes in the behaviour of water molecules over time as well). There's a sort of mythos about the metric system being all "sciency", but it's just as arbitrary as any other system when you get right down to it. A metre is one ten-millionth part of an arbitrarily selected measureable distance because, well, it's "about yay big", close enough to the yard (an ad hoc body measurement) everyone had been using anyway. (The nearest familiar alternatives would have been either two rods or a hand, or the French equivalents.) It's just easier to do the math in a lot of cases because base ten. Anchoring the values to something anyone can, in principle, measure anywhere in any reference frame, at least makes sure that we're all talking about the same thing - even if that thing changes. That said, there's no evidence for the proposition that they do change, and quite a bit to suggest they don't.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jean-bonneau 9y ago
> The metre is traditionally defined as one ten-millionth part of the distance between the geographic north pole and the equator along the Paris meridian. Not anymore: "The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 seconds." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

QAPereo 9y ago

You should read Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem I think you’d enjoy it.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

In the case of the meter it definitely is. Space time is stretching so the meter will slowly get longer, but you won't notice