Is Our Universe a Big Schrödinger’s Cat—Where It’s Alive Is Where We Live? | The Crux | Discover Magazine
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/12/01/is-our-universe-a-big-schrodingers-cat-where-its-alive-is-wh
Recently, astrophysicist John Webb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues published new findings that indicate that the fine structure constant may not be a constant after all—it may vary through space or time. Through observations of galaxies that lie 12 billion light-years roughly to the north with those at the same distance lying to the south, the team discovered variations in the fine structure constant amounting to about 1 part in 100,000. It is not clear whether quantum effects would drastically change when a fundamental constant such as the fine structure constant varies by such minute amounts. But if they do, and the change in the constant is significant, it could mean that there are universes—or distant parts of our own universe—where matter as we know it, and hence life, could not exist.