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An example of the importance of the fine structure constant: if it were about 5% larger in magnitude than it actually is, stellar fusion would not produce any carbon, and we wouldn't be here.
This research, however, appears to be showing variations of the order of 1 part in 100,000 over a time scale of 10 billion years. For comparison, best estimates place the current age of the universe at about 13.7 billion years.
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