Eric-- I response to your Friday, October 30, 2015 11:44 AM comment: One would think that as space expands the permittivity or the magnetic permeability it exhibits could also change assuming something is changing dimensionally. The idea that space only expands between galaxies and not within galaxies seems strange. So in a thought experiment performed in between galaxies one might expect to see normally stable atoms give up energy as the distances between their charges expand. However, I do not think this has been observed in inter galactic space dust. At what set of conditions the expansion of space stops as a galaxy is approached is not clear to me.
No change in the electric or magnetic properties of free space would suggest that the parameter involved in the expansion of space does not effect electric and magnetic properties. Considering the particle nature of photons, with their alternating, locally orthogonal electric and magnetic fields, would not be bothered by the expanding space. Bob Cook From: Eric Walker Sent: Friday, October 30, 2015 11:44 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Casimir, ZPE and Holmlid On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 8:36 AM, Bob Cook <[email protected]> wrote: This item suggests that the fine constant varies with time. It may be that relativistic conditions and time contraction cause small changes in the constant effective for any coherent system. If the fine structure constant is eventually found to vary in time, perhaps the first order in the variation goes back to a single component. Here are different versions of the fine structure constant: Here is a breakdown of the components from Wikipedia (translated to ascii for those with old email clients): e is the elementary charge; h_bar = h/2π is the reduced Planck constant; c is the speed of light in vacuum; e0 is the electric constant or permittivity of free space; u0 is the magnetic constant or permeability of free space; ke is the Coulomb constant; RK is the von Klitzing constant. I've long wondered whether the speed of light might not be constant. I see that what the study reported were limits on the possible variation, although the abstract said that their limits were consistent with a variation. Eric
