> To a modern physicist, perhaps the most interesting thing about the Oklo reactor is that it gives us one of the biggest levers on the question "Have the laws of physics changed over time?"
I don't think it really does, because our interpretation of the causes that produced the effects that we can see now as something which supports the conclusion that the laws of physics were the same then itself rests on the assumption that the laws of physics were the same then.
It provides one more data point that constrains just how different the laws of physics could have been in the past -- no matter how different the laws of physics were, it must have still enabled an event which created the isotopic concentrations we see today.
Yes, that is a much looser constraint than the GP described, but it is still a significant data point.
I don't think it really does, because our interpretation of the causes that produced the effects that we can see now as something which supports the conclusion that the laws of physics were the same then itself rests on the assumption that the laws of physics were the same then.