We’ve seen similar things before: claims that physical constants have varied over time. It is a favorite topic of both post-modern science deniers who claim that nothing useful can ever be known and fundamental theists who claim that nothing useful can ever be known outside of their sacred texts.

For such people unable or unwilling to do the math, the changes discovered here have never been higher than one part in 100,000, so they are not likely to help you prove that cigarette smoking is actually good for you, or that our planet is only 6,000 years old, more or less.

Never-the-less the discovery that fundamental physical constants might have changed somehow was astounding when it was first suggested back in 1998 by astrophysicist John Webb, who found a small discrepancy in the emission lines of quasars ten billion light years away. The light from these quasars was thus ten billion years old, and the discrepancy suggested that one of the most fundamental constants of nature, the so-called “fine-structure” constant had changed by about 0.001%. It was something of a bombshell, but cooler heads waited for confirmation. It was not forthcoming.

In 2004 astronomer Patrick Petitjean studied quasars in the southern hemisphere and found no indication of any shift in the fine-structure constant. The case seemed to be closed, but now another report John Webb in Physical Review Letters claims that studies of quasars in the opposite direction of the original study has detected another 0.001% anomaly that is opposite in magnitude.

The work needs to be confirmed, of course, but if this analysis is correct it suggests that physical constants might exist as a subtle gradient over the range of the universe. If you travel far enough, you may find the physical constants slightly different from what you are accustomed to. Some regions of the Universe may not be amenable to life as we know it.

This has implications for the weak Anthropic Principle, which states that the Universe is the way it is because if it weren’t then we would not be here to wonder why. If the properties of the Universe vary from place to place then it may be that this is the one place in the Universe where things like us can exist.