Crypto consequences of dimensionless constants changing their values over time?
jim bell
jdb10987 at yahoo.com
Sat Apr 1 11:01:40 PDT 2017
From: Georgi Guninski <guninski at guninski.com>
>This bugs me.
>Since 2009 it is known that the value of the dimensionless constant Pi
>changes over time: https://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5321 [1]
That's a FUNNY article!!!
Seriously, however, there are indeed examples of fundamental physical "constants" which may vary over time. http://io9.gizmodo.com/5642233/ask-a-physicist-is-the-fine-structure-constant-really-constant
One minor motivation to develop really precise clocks, accurate to 1 part in 10**18 (Ytterbium lattice clocks, for one example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock ) is that it is possible that two different such clocks (each using a different type of atom), a few meters apart on a desktop, could show a variation in rate over a reasonable period of time, say a month or a year. ×
Put more simply, suppose you could compare the frequency of two such clocks, with different types of atoms, and express that result to a precision of one part in 10**18. A month or a year later, you do the same comparison, you might discover that the ratio of frequencies are different by a few parts in 10**18, or perhaps much larger.
This would be a laboratory verification of a recent astronomical observation, a one-part-in-100,000 change over a period of 6 billion years: http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/constant.cfm If that rate of change were constant, it would be one part in 600 trillion per year. If an equivalent laboratory variation rate could be compared to a precision of 10**18, that would be 1600 units per year, or 133 per month, or perhaps 4 per day. ×
×
Jim Bell
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