Truely universal time and distance

Some news supporting my assertions about constants not being really constant:

http://www.economist.com/node/16930866

 

Some discussion has come up over alpha varying over time with some research into radioactive deposits and their isotope compositions.

In the context of this thread, this latest research, if someday confirmed, would put a ceiling on the error bars of our universal time constant. If we want to communicate to aliens a time unit, we only need to worry about those that can exist. Any regions where alpha is more than a few percent off would not have stellar systems to support them.
If anything could live in this kind of Outer Darkness, I think the novels on the consequences of dealing with such entities would indicate we may not want to talk to those.

Given the graduality of the shift, if confirmed, it is actually quite likely that an alien race we would most likely encounter would have a very close value, and we could discuss the parts per million error when we got to talking.

 

Self-serving argument and logical fallacy...

In any case, I'm pretty sure spectral lines of carbon, oxygen and even heavier elements have shown up in every survey of every galaxy ever made, or else it would have been Pretty Big News.

Edit:
Speaking of which, check out the Hubble telescope shot on this page (the article itself is also pretty damn interesting, so make sure to take a few mins of your time to read it): http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/b...me-death-spiral-of-a-bizarre-star/#more-20567

Note that there are more GALAXIES than individual stars visible in that shot! Pretty f'n crazy if I may say so!

The universe sure is a mind-boggling place...