Science thrives not only on the universality of physical laws but also on the existence and persistence of physical constants. The constant of gravitation, known by most scientists as “big G,” supplies Newton’s equation of gravity with the measure of how strong the force will be. This quantity has been implicitly tested for variation over eons. If you do the math, you can determine that a star’s luminosity is steeply dependent on big G. In other words, if big G had been even slightly different in the past, then the energy output of the Sun would have been far more variable than anything the
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