Someone who admits he knows nothing about geology, asking where the colum came from?

The new study examined light emitted from distant quasars, powerful young galaxies powered by supermassive black holes. The researchers examined how atoms in giant gas clouds absorbed light back then compared to now. They found that the fine structure constant was smaller in the past.Some exotic theories that currently are only on the fringes of cosmology could benefit by the possible change."There are many possibilities to incorporate a variation of the fine structure constant into existing theories, and there are some theories were the constants of nature are predicted to vary," Stiavelli said. "For the proponents of these theories this would become evidence that the theory is correct."One of the ideas that might benefit is string theory, which holds that there are many more dimensions to the universe than just time and space. String theorists say that changes in these dimensions over time could force changes in the fine structure constant.Several scientists told The New York Times that they were skeptical that the new finding would hold up under further scrutiny, saying that the very small difference found could be a slight statistical or observational flaw in the study. But these same scientists were also excited about the possible implications.