YET another fundamental constant of nature may have changed over the last 12 billion years. If confirmed, the result could force physicists to radically rethink their theories and provide support for string theory, which predicts extra spatial dimensions.
This is not the first time such constants have been suspected of changing over the universe’s lifetime. Most famously, there has been controversy over the “fine-structure constant” alpha, which governs how light and electrons interact, with some claiming and others denying that it is changing (Â鶹´«Ã½, 3 July 2004, p 6).
Now up for grabs is the ratio of the…
