USATODAY.com – Some (atomic) fundamentals may change as time goes by
“The fundamental things apply, as time goes by,” sings Sam, the pianist in Casablanca. But maybe Sam didn’t mean that to apply over 12 billion years.
A new study in the journal Physical Review Letters suggests that over the lifetime of the cosmos, some fundamental things may not be so fundamental.
The study, led by physicists Wim Ubachs and Elmar Reinhold of the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, suggests that “mu,” the mass ratio of two atomic particles — the proton and the electron — “could have decreased in the past 12 billion years.”
At that’s an interesting notion to physicists, who rely on this fundamental constant to understand the structure of the atoms inside stars, planets and people. In more technical terms, mu sets the scale of the “strong” nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces in the universe (gravity, electromagnetism and the weak force that governs radioactivity are the others.) The strong force binds the sub-atomic particles called quarks to one another inside protons. As fundamental stuff goes, that’s pretty fundamental.
Measured today, the ratio indicates that a proton weighs (just roughly speaking here) 1836.15267261 times more than an electron.
Call me nerdy, but I find this pretty fascinating. Wanted to get this up before work. Blah 🙁 . Click article link for more, along with some quasar pics.