Re:Astronomers find an ancient black hole the size of 12B suns
by venomsnake on Thursday February 26, 2015 @02:46AM
(#9111497)
Probably stupid question, but do we have solid evidence that the laws of physics/constants were the same/behaved the same back then? I know that to be true for the last couple of billion years. But so early in the development of the universe?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Astronomers find an ancient black hole the size of 12B suns
by kryptiskt on Thursday February 26, 2015 @03:47AM
(#9111641)
Yes, we have evidence going very far back, for example, the abundances of light elements were set in the first minutes of the big bang, and they have been successfully interpreted with nuclear physics as we know it.
Re:Astronomers find an ancient black hole the size of 12B suns
by tim333 on Thursday February 26, 2015 @03:54AM
(#9111664)
You can get evidence by observing the early universe with telescopes and the like. I don't think anyone has observed the laws/constants being noticeably different although you can't really prove a negative.
Re:Astronomers find an ancient black hole the size of 12B suns
by privong on Thursday February 26, 2015 @08:53AM
(#9112455)
You can put limits on how much they could have changed, though. And people do this, e.g., [0], which found the proton-to-electron mass ratio has not varied by more than a relative factor of 4e-7, over the past 7.5 billion years.