Quote:
Originally Posted by Cougar
I happen to be reading Paul Davies The Cosmic Jackpot. I'm about in the middle of the book, and I'm not sure where he's going with this, but he is reporting on the long-standing question about the physical constants and why they seem to be so finely tuned to allow stars and galaxies and observers such as us to exist. If the relative masses of the proton and neutron were slightly different, our universe would be nothing like what we observe, and indeed, observers could not exist.
Yes, this is the Anthropic question, and Davies points out that historically scientists have considered this as tautological, unproductive, and unworthy of any scientific consideration. But in the last few years, several respected and very knowledgeable theoretical physicists and cosmologists have said, "Wait a minute. These cosmic coincidences are significant and too coincidental to ignore any longer." And the odd comparative strengths of the various constants? Why the heck is the electromagnetic force 1040 times stronger than the gravitational force? (But as it happens, that's a good thing.) And the biggest miscalculation of all time, why does the vacuum energy appear to be 10119 times weaker than quantum mechanical calculations imply it should be? (Again, a darn good thing it is, too!)
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I really don't see how anything has changed. It's good for us, since we like to exist, but this universe, as it is, is not objectively any better, any more special, than any other conceivable universe. It's only because we value the process called life that this universe is special to us at all.
If the universe had difference constants, perhaps other forms of life would exist, and they'd be thinking, "Hey, if the physical constants were just a little different, we couldn't exist. There would be no electromagnetic tendrils for us to live around and attract our magnetic monopole food. There'd be no quark-gluon plasma to swim through. Pshaw! Life couldn't exist without quark-gluon plasma!"