A century after Albert Einstein published his most famous ideas, physicists commemorated the occasion by trying to demolish one of them.
Yesterday astronomers were to tell experts gathering at Warwick University in England to celebrate the anniversary of the great man's "miracle year" that the speed of light -- Einstein's unchanging yardstick that underpins his special theory of relativity -- might be slowing down.
Michael Murphy, of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, said: "We are claiming something extraordinary here.
fundamental
"The findings suggest that there is a more fundamental theory of the way that light and matter interact; and that special relativity, at its foundation, is actually wrong," Murphy said.
Einstein's insistence that the speed of light was always the same set up many of his big ideas and established the bedrock of modern physics.
Murphy said: "It could turn out that special relativity is a very good approximation but it's missing a little bit."
"That little bit may be the doorknob to a whole new universe and a whole new set of fundamental laws," Murphy added.
Murphy's team did not measure a change in the speed of light directly.
light from quasars
Instead, they analyzed flickering light from the far-distant celestial objects called quasars.
Their light takes billions of years to travel to Earth, letting astronomers see the fundamental laws of the universe at work during its earliest days.
The observations, from the Keck telescope in Hawaii, suggest that the way certain wavelengths of light are absorbed has changed.
electromagnetic force
If true, it means that something called the fine structure constant -- a measure of the strength of electromagnetic force that holds atoms together -- has changed by about 0.001 percent since the Big Bang.
The speed of light depends on the fine structure constant.
If one varies with time then the other probably does too, meaning Einstein got it wrong.
If light moved faster in the early universe than now, physicists would have to rethink many fundamental theories.
His conclusions are based on work carried out in 2001 with John Webb at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
disputed
Other astronomers disputed the findings, and a smaller study using a different telescope last year suggested no change.
Murphy's team is analyzing the results from the largest experiment so far, using light from 143 bright stellar objects.
Einstein's burst of creativity in 1905 stunned his contemporaries. He published three papers that changed the way scientists viewed the world, including the special theory of relativity that led to his deduction E=mc2.
The Physics2005 conference, set up by the Institute of Physics as part of its Einstein Year initiative, runs until Thursday.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS