Why is the universe life-friendly?

[Swede]

Simply put, if the Big Bang had detonated with slightly greater force, the cosmos would be essentially empty by now. If the primordial explosion had propelled the initial payload of cosmic raw materials outward with slightly lesser force, the universe would long ago have recollapsed in a Big Crunch. In neither case would human beings or other life forms have had time to evolve.

As Stephen Hawking asks, “Why is the universe so close to the dividing line between collapsing again and expanding indefinitely? In order to be as close as we are now, the rate of expansion early on had to be chosen fantastically accurately.”

If we put to one side theological approaches to this ultimate issue, what rational pathways forward are on offer from the scientific community? I suggest that three basic approaches are available. Two are familiar while the third is radically novel.



http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=1%23656

[GOPBasher]

1. I like these discussions.

I've always been interested in this stuff. Anyway, to discuss it as a purely scientific question -- putting aside any religious beliefs -- I think there is really only one explanation. There are many, many universes, lets say trillions of trillions. In one of those many universes, it just happened that everything happened just right for life to exist. And here we are.

[Shipwack]

2. And if it didn't happen just right...

... there would be no one around to discuss it. :)

[BlueJazz]

3. Yep....You got it, Partner!

[Swede]

6. Your scenario fails the mediocrity principle.

The mediocrity principle, a mainstay of scientific theorizing since Copernicus, is a statistically based rule of thumb that, absent contrary evidence, a particular sample (Earth, for instance, or our particular universe) should be assumed to be a typical example of the ensemble of which it is a part. The Weinberg/Susskind approach flagrantly flouts the mediocrity principle. Instead, their approach simply takes refuge in a brute, unfathomable mystery—the conjectured lucky roll of the dice in a crap game of eternal chaotic inflation—and declines to probe seriously into the possibility of a naturalistic cosmic evolutionary process that has the capacity to yield a life-friendly set of physical laws and constants on a nonrandom basis.

[GOPBasher]

8. I know the mediocrity principal. But I thought this discussion was

assuming that the properties of the universe that allow for life are, in fact, statistically rare. Of course we don't know that, because we can't observe any other universes (if there are any). I thought we were just assuming that, and asking why.

[Igel]

12. Self-quote? Quote? Or coincidence?

"... The mediocrity principle, a mainstay
of scientific theorizing since Copernicus, is a statistically
based rule of thumb that, absent contrary evidence, a particular
sample (Earth, for instance, or our particular universe) should
be assumed to be a typical example of the ensemble of which it
is a part. The Weinberg/Susskind approach flagrantly flouts the
mediocrity principle. Instead, their approach simply takes
refuge in a brute, unfathomable mystery=97the conjectured lucky
roll of the dice in a crap game of eternal chaotic inflation=97and
declines to probe seriously into the possibility of a
naturalistic cosmic evolutionary process that has the capacity
to yield a life-friendly set of physical laws and constants on a
nonrandom basis. It is as if Charles Darwin, contemplating the
famous tangled bank (the arresting visual image with which he
concludes The Origin of Species), had confessed not a
magnificent obsession with gaining an understanding of the
mysterious natural processes that had yielded "endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful," but rather a smug
satisfaction that of course the earthly biosphere must have
somehow evolved in a just-so manner mysteriously friendly to
humans and other currently living species, or else Darwin and
other humans would not be around to contemplate it!"

From http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2006/feb/m16-024.shtml

[Swede]

13. It's Gardner's article on Kurzweils site all right.

The whole article,hmmm,they don't seem concerned by copyright limits.

[salib]

4. Remember, it is not a question of "what are the odds" of something happening

But, when asking if something is possible, or can ever happen, it is more important to ask what are the odds of it never happening.

E.g., people often see a coincidence and ask "what are the odds of this happening"? When, in fact, the real question is what are the the odds of it never happening. Simply becuase it happens once, does not mean one is asking how often will it happen again. However, people persist.

And so we have the universe and we ask "what are the odds"? Well, I would say there are 1. I.e., here we are.

Instead, ask what are the odds that it would never occur. That is the more pertinent question.

(confession: I am PWI, which is VERY hazardous when dealing with logical issues)

[John Gauger]

5. I wouldn't call this place friendly.

I view the universe as extremely inhospitable.

[bananas]

11. That was your 666'th post

Interesting comment for post #666.

[pretzel4gore]

7. what are the odds against any individual existing?

even w/out going outside biology, each of us represents something mathematically amazing. just the combination of sperm/egg, out of all the possibles, in case of parents, who themselves were lottery winners in terms of each of their chance! and so on way back to adam and eve! in pure math terms, steven hawking is improbable bordering on the impossible! if you go back to adam and eve era, or caveman time, say 10 thousand years ago, and remove ONE parent from the stream, then ....there's literally hundreds of trillions of people who don't exist (and that's just one family!)

[rman]

9. are we sure there even is a "why" to this?

[YankeyMCC]

10. Without life nobody would know it was here

:shrug:

[Esra Star]

19. There is no object if there is no observer.

[Kiouni]

14. life is inevitable

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Kiouni/2

[htuttle]

15. You got it backwards -- Life is universe-friendly

Life evolved in our universe. Ergo, it is particularly well-suited to living in it.

[lumberjack_jeff]

23. In fact our brains are universe-friendly too

We can't get our heads around the physical nature of a multi-dimensional universe with different physical constants or a bi-directional temporal dimension.

Life works in this universe. Life may, or may not, work in other universes which may, or may not, exist.

[Odin2005]

24. Bingo

The Anthropic Principle is a load of hokum.

[YankeyMCC]

16. Relavant article at space.com today

Why Are We Here? Theoreticians Debate the Fundamentals

(snip)
The emergence of humans in the universe might not tell us anything concerning the fundamental constants of nature as scientists have speculated, new theoretical findings argue.

The idea known as the anthropic principle states that human existence is possible only if fundamental constants such as the speed of light or the strength of gravity are not higher or lower than what is observed.

Scientists who support anthropic reasoning suggest they can understand fundamental properties of the universe by determining what conditions intelligent beings such as humans need to exist. For instance, if gravity was too strong, black holes would form too often and suck up all matter before humans could evolve on Earth, but if gravity was too weak, it could not attract matter to form stars or planets.

Dark forces

According to advocates of anthropic reasoning, in 1987 Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg used the logic to calculate the cosmological constant—the strength of the mysterious force driving the universe apart—with surprising accuracy, well before astronomical observations turned up similar findings. What astronomers have since observed is that the universe's expansion is accelerating, driven by a sort of mysterious force dubbed either dark energy or vacuum energy.
(snip)

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061204_mm_anthropic_debate.html

[AngryAmish]

18. Why are we here? To eat burritos.

It is the best explanation I have heard so far.

[phantom power]

17. I question the premise. Is the universe really life-friendly?

I mean, so far as we've been able to measure, life is known to exist on only one planet in the entire universe. To many decimal places, that's "nowhere."

I hate that, by the way, but there it is.

[trotsky]

20. I yield to Douglas Adams on this philosophical point.

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. -- Douglas Adams, Speech at Digital Biota 2, 1998.

[YankeyMCC]

21. Which goes to show

the world is actually built to have Douglas Adams in it.

Yet strangely we persist without him...must be like the coyote running off the cliff...we just haven't realized it's time to...oppps

[Az]

22. The question presumes this is the only universe

It also presumes that this is the only sort of life that would be possible. In the end its essentially putting the cart before the horse. We are the life that resulted from this particular universe.

Look up M-Theory and Braine Theory for a couple of notions of multiverse explanations.

[Occulus]

25. How many universes are there?

Do we only happen to inhabit a life-friendly universe?

Does the mere presence of life in a universe make that universe life-friendly?

:D