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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Alternate Universe
Message-ID: <2036@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 24-Mar-86 01:21:35 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.2036
Posted: Mon Mar 24 01:21:35 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Mar-86 07:49:37 EST
References: <10800018@uiucdcsb>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL)
Lines: 23

In article <10800018@uiucdcsb> wsmith@uiucdcsb.CS.UIUC.EDU writes:
>Postulate a new universe with elementary particles that look, smell and taste
>like our electrons, quarks, photons etc.   The difference is that charge
>is a normal random variable in time with mean the same as our mean for
>each particle and a standard deviation of for a particle of charge q,   
>10^-6*q.
>
>Would such a universe have noticible differences from our own?   What if
>the 10^-6 were changed to 10^-3?
>
>The charge for each electron would be varying randomly as a function of time.

The immediate answer is, you've broken charge conservation, so
atoms would blow apart, etc.  A better answer is, it isn't
permissible to postulate arbitrary changes like this.  Charge
conservation is linked to other physical principles; everything
is deeply intertwingled (to quote Ted Nelson).

Here's another, only slightly less off-the-wall question:
Suppose all charges could "simultaneously" (ignore relativity
for a moment) be doubled.  Would the resulting universe look
any different?  If you don't like this formulation, then
replace "charges" with "local vacuum light speeds".