Variable physical laws

Physical quantities such as the speed of light, the gravitational constant and the electron mass are believed to be the same independent of where and when they appear in the universe. Therefore, they are known as constants of nature.

................snip............

But there are dimensionless constants, i.e. they are independent of units. On April 21 this year new findings were published in Physical Review Letters implying that a dimensionless constant – the ratio between the electron mass and the proton mass – has changed with time.

There is no reason to worry – unless you are a physicist or astronomer and don’t want to change the model of the universe we have today. But Sveneric Johansson thinks that the results are more exciting than troublesome.

.......................................snip

"Our view of the universe is in many ways not complete, he says. The content of 90% of the matter in universe is unknown – the so called “dark matter”. And there are contradictory opinions about what happened after the Big Bang. Therefore, we should welcome all new knowledge even if it does not agree with our present conception of the world."