Manifestations of a spatial variation of fundamental constants in atomic and nuclear clocks, Oklo, meteorites, and cosmological phenomena

School of Physics, University of New South Wales - Sydney 2052, Australia

Received: 7 November 2011
Accepted: 8 December 2011

Abstract

The recent indications of a spatial variation in the fine-structure constant α from quasar absorption systems (Webb J. K. et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 107 (2011) 191101) must be independently confirmed by complementary searches. In this letter, we discuss how the spatial variation observed by astronomers can be tested using terrestrial measurements of time variation of the fundamental constants in the laboratory, nuclear decay in meteorites, and analysis of the Oklo natural nuclear reactor. Furthermore, we show that a spatial variation of the fundamental constants may be observable as spatial anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background, the accelerated expansion (dark energy), and large-scale structure of the Universe.