this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
177 points (91.5% liked)

Astronomy

4047 readers
32 users here now

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Heh

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Ludrol@szmer.info 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The Covarying Coupling Constants theory posits that the fundamental constants of nature,[...], are not fixed but vary across the cosmos.

This undermines current fundamental axiom of science that laws of physics are constant across universe. Until we go there and measure them to be actually different. This hypothesis doesn't have a leg to stand on.

[โ€“] BarryZuckerkorn@beehaw.org 2 points 8 months ago

I'm skeptical of this theory as well, but I'd point out that our observations show that at galaxy scales, gravity is much stronger in certain places than we'd predict using our current model of gravity and the matter we can otherwise detect, and at even larger scales the acceleration of the universe's expansion is being driven by something we don't understand.

Right now, the dominant theory in cosmology is that each of these observed phenomena are driven by dark matter and dark energy, but we don't have any direct evidence of the existence of either, just indirect evidence that stuff doesn't behave as we might expect.

So it's a choice between theories that don't make intuitive sense, and break some fundamental assumptions about physics.