Cosmologist Proposes Framework for Laws of Physics Changing Over Time

Cosmologist João Magueijo has presented a framework that attempts to explain how the laws of physics may have varied in the early universe before settling into their present state. Magueijo argues that the equations and constants now treated as fixed, such as those describing gravity and electromagnetism, could once have taken different values.

He states that this period would have preceded particles, geometry, and time as currently understood.

The proposal draws on physicist John Wheeler's description of an initial "higgledy-piggledy" state without established physical laws. Magueijo links this idea to earlier work by Paul Dirac, who suggested in 1937 that fundamental constants might change with the age of the universe.

Magueijo also references Lee Smolin's cosmological natural selection model as a further development of the concept that physical laws can evolve.

Magueijo notes that standard physics assumes continuous symmetries, including time-translation invariance, which imply conservation of energy. He states that allowing laws to change over time would violate this conservation principle. The article indicates that Magueijo's framework seeks to avoid introducing additional meta-laws while accounting for the transition from an initial lawless condition to the observed regularities of physics.