Posted on 11/15/2018 5:19:25 AM PST by Heartlander
Humans have often looked at the night sky and wondered if there’s anyone else out there. But stare into that darkness long enough, and many wonder instead: how did we get here? What were the odds, in a universe so enormous and chaotic, that humans should have come to exist at all? Is life, let alone intelligent life, such a wildly improbable occurrence that we’re the only ones here? Or are we an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics?
Life exists on Earth (assuming we’re not living in a computer simulation). Therefore, the universe must exist in such a way that we are possible. That’s the essence of the anthropic principle. On the one hand, it sounds tautological. By that, I mean, I’m just saying the same thing twice. But cast another way, it can lead us to important truths about the universe. It means any version of the universe we can fathom has to allow for life to exist at least once. When there are things we don’t understand about the universe — how dark energy works, how the cosmos formed — all our theories have to include the fact that we exist. The universe must allow us.
Some people have taken this anthropic principle theory to extreme ends. It can imply that the universe must favor life, or even life like us, which isn’t exactly the same thing.
And it does seem hard to believe humans exist, given the huge range of paths the universe could have taken. I don’t just mean that the dinosaur-killing asteroid could have hit a few million years later and changed the course of evolution on the planet. A bit more fundamental is the idea that without a moon and its accompanying tides, maybe Earth creatures never would have ventured out of the oceans. But we can dive even deeper. The laws of physics themselves seem perfected just for us.
An old version of this anthropic principle argument involves the Hoyle state, a particular state of a particular type of carbon. If the Hoyle state didn’t exist, stars could not produce the abundance of carbon they do. Carbon is the basic element upon which life is built. If it were scanter in the universe, life wouldn’t exist, down to the simplest microbes. And it wasn’t clear, for a long time, how the Hoyle state worked, just that it must: After all, here we are.
More recently, scientists have pointed out that if one tweaks many of the dimensionless physical constants — numbers like pi that are independent of units and simply exist as fundamental ideas — none of the cosmos we see would exist. One of these numbers is omega, the density parameter, which pits gravity’s pull against the expanding push of dark energy. If gravity were stronger, the universe would have long since ceased expanding, and would have collapsed back down in a reverse Big Bang, often called the “Big Crunch.” If dark energy were stronger, then the universe would race away from itself so that no matter would stick together and stars, planets, and people could never form.
If the cosmos were truly a random and senseless arrangement of particles, it seems eerie or suspicious to many that these two forces balance so delicately.
But we can remember the tautological approach: if the universe were any way other than what it is, we wouldn’t be here to worry about it. Of course the universe seems fine-tuned to us; it’s the only one we know.
This argument in itself gives rise to questions about a multiverse. Are there, then, other universes where the laws of physics don’t allow matter to stick together and form stars and planets, dogs and cats? The anthropic principle doesn’t answer this. We’re left to ponder.
The truth is that right now, we’re drastically short on data. We’ve only stepped foot on two bodies in the whole universe. We’ve only sent probes to a handful more. After that, it’s all just long-distance photography skills and a lot of semi-applied math.
We can ask how often the universe provides the things we think are necessary to life — the Drake equation is a good attempt to quantify this. But even that assumes that life must be somewhat as we know it.
What about inorganic life forms? Scientists have posited chemical reasons for and against life forms that vary too much from what we know on Earth. Maybe the Hoyle state is irrelevant, if other forms of life don’t require carbon anyway. You can get pretty trippy heading down this rabbit hole of questioning. How would we even recognize life so different from us? For that matter, how do we know rocks aren’t sentient, and we’ve just never noticed, so caught up in our carbon chauvinism?
The universe does seem fine-tuned for our existence. The flip side, of course, is that we are unarguably fine-tuned to the universe we find ourselves in.
The very structure of matter down to the smallest subatomic particle has the blueprint for life built into it or there would not be life.
So what is consciousness?
bookmark
No. But God’s Creation is precisely tuned to support life here on earth.
I stopped reading right there. Anyone so out of touch with reality isn't worth further consideration.
His out of the box thinking inspired many. I think his list of doctoral students is without comparison. Please let me know if there is a more accomplished list of students.
Jacob Bekenstein
Claudio Bunster
Demetrios Christodoulou
Ignazio Ciufolini
Hugh Everett
Richard Feynman
Kenneth W. Ford
Robert Geroch
John R. Klauder
Bahram Mashhoon
Charles Misner
Milton Plesset
Benjamin Schumacher
Kip Thorne
Jayme Tiomno
John S. Toll
Bill Unruh
Robert Wald
Katharine Way
Arthur Wightman
I find it easier to believe that consciousness creates things, rather than the other way around.
We know we’re here. There has to be some form of self creation to explain it.
**So what is consciousness?**
That question still has not been answered. Consciousness can be defined using scientific methods, but science has not yet determined from whence it came.
The thing that animates us is Divine, so it is useless to scientifically deconstruct this mystery...
“God”
One can posit “multiverses” or “life is a computer simulation” and they are considered hipsters or deep-thinkers.
But if you mention God - or simply a creator, you’re merely a kook.
I find it easier to believe that consciousness creates things, rather than the other way around.
We know we’re here. There has to be some form of self creation to explain
Your consciousness created the cars we drive. Is that what you are saying?
Did your consciousness create the universe? Did it create the trees and all the chemical SYSTEMS within that tree.
You might as well take a piece of wood and carve an idol out of half of it and cook you meal with the other half. It is a much better logical explanation.
How incredibly egotistical of humans to believe that the Universe was created just for our benefit.
This is the same species that believed the Earth was flat and that the Sun revolved around the Earth. This is the same species that is constantly unearthing fossils and fragments of past civilizations that change our understanding Earth’s (and our) history.
Quite frankly, we know very little.
The purpose of the universe is to make lead (Pb).
The author has it exactly backwards.
The universe was not designed to allow life. The universe is what it is, and life formed to exist in it.
Or, as the goofy Doctor in “Jurassic Park” said, Life will find a way!”
This, of course, all depends on whether you takes your religion straight, or with soda......
self creation to explain it.
For starters: Rational decision-making based on the Infinite Spreadsheet is also the solution to peace,
The most amazing lack of logic is that everything is random, there is no design.
But based on randomness, we can predict.
YOU CANNOT HAVE SCIENCE IF YOUR PREMISE IS RANDOMNESS.
All you can have is UNENDING COMIC BOOK THEORIES. Todays flavor of the “truth”.
Your consciousness created the cars we drive. Is that what you are saying?
...
I don’t design cars, but somebody does.
..if you believe you can place watch parts in a box, shake it up and open it to find a perfectly assembled watch
= = =
Analog or Digital?
It makes a difference.
It’s hard to say until we have more than one example of life. If we find 50 examples in different places and they all require the same parameters to exist, then it would go a long way. But for now all we have is an example of one. Which means any theory is going to have giant assumptions mixed in with the facts, including that life is either singular, rare, or plentiful because of how we perceive ourselves to be situated.
Freegards
NOPE.
Analog & Digital same - both have many parts that make a completed working watch as the “Designer” intended.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
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