Why is this univese so life friendyt?

[Swede]

I believe that we were meant to be. Scientists are now adding life to one of the parameters of existentce. Speed of light, gravity,thermocuclear stars, melting water.

[Skinner]

1. This is going to sound like circular reasoning, but think about it for a second.

Obviously, the universe we live in is life-friendly. If it were not life-friendly, then we would not be here to contemplate its life-friendliness.

The point being: The fact that the universe is friendly to life does not prove anything beyond the fact that it is friendly to life.

(Now pardon me while I move this thread to either the Religion forum or the Science forum. I will decide which momentarily.)

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Good choice of where to move it.

Besides we really have no evidence that the universe is particularly 'life friendly'. All we know is that our little star happens to have one little planet with life on it, and none of our nearest star neighbors, if they have life, have managed to evolve to the point where they are noisy enough for us to observe them.

[papau]

4. Very true - as the fact proves nothing, I'm not sure it is science n/t

n/t

[Evoman]

26. Be careful with words.

Science doesn't prove anything.

[Swede]

17. Physics now see what long odds this universe is.

I am therefore I exist is slowly disappearing as odds beyond chance. M theory is making scientist see this. The chance of this universe existing is counter-intuitive and against number theory. Yet here we are. .

[mudesi]

27. Also known as the Anthropic principle

Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History Of Time" spent a few paragraphs on this very question.

More Info Here.

[GeorgeGist]

2. It's a big universe...

and I haven't seen nearly enough of it to conclude that it is 'so life friendyt'.

[papau]

5. What is proven by the difference between "very" and "not so much" life friendly? n/t

n/t

[Skinner]

6. I think, by "life-friendly" the OP is referring to the fact that...

...the basic laws of physics that apply to the entire universe are such that life is possible.

Obviously, life is not possible everywhere in the Universe. But life is possible in at least one small island in the universe (and probably a lot more places than that).

[Swede]

9. By life friendy I mean -- we are here,therefore something meant

it to be. Flowing water,93 million miles froma yellow star, thermonuclear reaction turns hydrogen into helium,speed of light. I don't mean some guy with a white beard and a robe.

[Skinner]

10. I would disagree that existence of anything necessarily implies intent.

Sometimes stuff just happens.

[Swede]

12. Don't you see something deeper?

Synchronized is a fact. Positive thinking works. I know stuff happens. I think there is something deeper. Light is both a particle and a wave,how can this be?

[Warren Stupidity]

16. Cargo cults

Your inability to understand quantum physics (and I am right there with you) is not proof of anything other than your inabliity to understand quantum physics. See cargo cults for an example of how god can be mistakenly found in the mundane.

[skepticscott]

21. Hullo?

Synchronized is a fact. Whatever in the world that means.

Positive thinking works. Except when it doesn't.

I know stuff happens. Not a big news flash, and no proof of anything.

I think there is something deeper. I'm happy for you, but thinking is not demonstrating

Light is both a particle and a wave, how can this be? Because it ISN'T both a particle and a wave. Light exhibits some of the properties that we associate with the classical things we call particles and some of the properties that we associate with the classical things we call waves, but that doesn't mean it's either or neither or both. That was counterintuitive to the long-ingrained thinking of classical physicists, but there's no physical law that forbids it, and there's certainly no implication of conscious intent behind it just because it's hard to get your brain around

[skepticscott]

11. When you say that something "meant it to be"

the implication is that SOME conscious entity (bearded or not) capable of intent and planning must be behind our existence. Even if that's so, what was behind the existence of THAT entity? More intent, or simply the normal workings of mindless, purposeless natural processes? And if that entity could have come about that way, why not us?

[SidDithers]

20. If there is a 1 in a billion chance of life happening...

but there are a billion billion stars, then the chances of life happening are pretty good. No meaning is really needed.

And life only has to happen once. Darwinian evolution takes over from there.

Sid

[skepticscott]

7. Limited point of view

These are parameters for existence and life only as we know them. The whole argument that if any of the fundamental constants of the universe were just a teensy bit different, matter could not exist and life could not have emerged is a bogus one. It presumes that no other form of matter is possible, and we frankly don't have the science knowledge to conclude that. For all we know, with different fundamental parameters, a completely different type of existence could be possible, one that we can't even comprehend with our present undertanding of physics.

[pretzel4gore]

8. only a very tiny, miniscule part...

there's an infinity of temperatures/pressures acting on matter throughout existence- and on earth those temps/pressures are suitable for life, but only within the infinitismal small portion of the infinity of everlasting time ...all these anamalies occur at the same time /place. holy mackeral! mathematically, life isn't possible, yet it happened(!)

[Orsino]

14. Yeah. "Miniscule" is an understatement.

Most of the universe is distinctly unfriendly. A few feet down, or a few miles up, we're dead.

[Not_Longer_Than_20_C]

13. Friendly?

The universe may be life friendly, but life isn't necessarily so life friendly. Look at all the wars & rumors of wars. Are they meant to be?

Or take the smallpox bacteria, not so friendly. What does it all mean? Maybe the universe didn't want to appear to be playing favorites.

My theory - life is meant to be stressful, helps us keep our edge.

[Swede]

15. I think we were created.

Not by God,but as an experiment. The odds are so long.

[ljm2002]

18. Well I think the answer is obvious...

...life is simply an intrinsic property of the universe. When the right conditions are present, life manifests. Therefore there is not such a separation between "us" and "the universe". None of which answers whether there is a deity as such -- my view is that the whole thing is divine, why try and posit some invented deity over it all. If there is a deity it is also intrinsic to the universe. Our existence is its manifestation.

Okay sorry I just felt like sharing this morning...

[MistressOverdone]

19. Because the life that is here

evolved to correspond to the characteristics of this environment?

Just saying...

[jgraz]

22. google "anthropic principle"

[varkam]

23. It's not.

A small percentage of planets in our universe are thought to be sustainable to living organisms. The majority of the universe (and, indeed, space itself) is very life-unfriendly.

[jgraz]

24. Well, it is if you consider the fundamental physical laws

This has been pointed out many times by many people, but I think I read it first in one of Brian Greene's books. He points out that the fundamental properties of the universe seem to have been finely tuned to support life as we know it.

For example, a slight increase in the strong nuclear force and all hydrogen would long ago have fused into helium -- meaning no water or any hydrocarbons. A slight decrease in the same force and you'd have none of the heavy elements needed for organic chemistry.

If gravity were slightly weaker, stars would not be able compress enough to trigger nuclear fusion (also a problem with a slightly stronger strong nuclear force). In fact, stars and galaxies might never have formed at all. With slightly stronger gravity, the universe would have collapsed long before any life could evolve.

There is a pretty long list of these properties, each in a delicate balance with other laws and constants. Change any of them, even slightly, and we wouldn't be here.

Of course, none of this is evidence for the existence of a designer, or even that our evolution is somehow the "purpose" of the universe. It may be that different laws would simply have led to different lifeforms or that this universe is one of many, each with a different set of randomly configured properties.

My guess is that we'll someday find solid reasons for why each of these properties is set up as it is. To use Einstein's phrasing: I don't think god had any choice in creating the universe.

[varkam]

25. Well

My guess is that we'll someday find solid reasons for why each of these properties is set up as it is. To use Einstein's phrasing: I don't think god had any choice in creating the universe.

"Why" in that statement implies that there is an intelligent force or at least an objective purpose for things being as the way that they are. And also just to be clear, Einstein didn't believe in a personal god or intelligent supernatural force in the universe.

[jgraz]

28. We agree on all of this

To me, finding out "why" means finding the underlying physics which determine these values. Perhaps "how" would be a better choice, but I don't see that much of a difference.

I'm also assuming that most people understand what Einstein means when he uses the word "god", but I know that theists seize on this to support their own false claims about who shares their beliefs. I was just trying to be a bit ironic. And failing apparently :P

What this boils down to is another "god of the gaps" fallacy: i.e., since we don't understand how (why) all these properties have the values they do, it must be god's doing.

[varkam]

29. My irony meter isn't working as well as it used to

So you'll have to forgive me :)

I still assert, however, that most of the universe cannot support life. Even though the laws might be such that we can be here, the majority of the universe is barren.

And I don't know why, but whenever I hear "god of the gaps" my mind automatically thinks "lord of the dance" :shrug:

[moggie]

30. Perhaps our universe evolved to support life?

This is, essentially, Lee Smolin's idea of "fecund universes". As I understand it, it goes something like this:

There's a hypothesis that, when a black hole collapses, it gives rise to a big bang and the creation of a new universe elsewhere. Smolin's hypothesis is that the intense energies present in a black hole can slightly modify the fundamental constants, and that these modified values will be inherited by the child universe. A universe whose parameters are conducive to the production of many black holes will therefore have many offspring universes, while a universe which doesn't produce black holes will have at most one child (if it collapses into a "big crunch" singularity). So a form of evolution takes place, with the multiverse favouring universes which produce many black holes.

The link between black hole formation and life may not be obvious. But the heavy elements needed for the complex chemistry of life as we know it were created in stars and distributed by supernovae. And the supernova of a sufficiently massive star is one way to create a black hole. A universe whose fundamental constants gave rise to no stars would not create heavy elements, nor to black holes (via the usual route). A universe which had only small stars would have relatively few black holes, and also relatively few supernovae, so heavy elements would be rare outside of those stars. So perhaps the multiverse "evolves" universes with chemistry conducive to life!

One problem with this (apart from the fact that it's very speculative and probably impossible to disprove) is that many micro black holes could be created very early in the universe's history, while the post-big-bang pressure was still sufficiently great, so even a universe not suitable for star formation could have many offspring.

Personally, the anthropic principle is enough for me, but the fecund universes idea is intriguing.

[jgraz]

31. Cool idea, but I seem to remember Hawking showing that it's wrong somehow

I can't remember where I read this, so it might just be sleep deprivation. One thing that's interesting to consider in this context is Hawking's theory of black hole evaporation (in short, virtual particles appear near the event horizon and one of the pair gets sucked in while the other escapes). If Smolin is right, our universe is slowly evaporating.

Smolin's idea fits well with Dawkin's conjecture that the best mechanism for developing life-friendly universes is (wait for it) natural selection. A fecund universe might be one way to achieve this, but only if the fundamental laws were re-rolled each time. M-theory's brane-collision is a more promising candidate, since it explicitly resets the physics for every universe created.

[Imperialism Inc.]

32. Actually, it isn't very life friendly at all. Most of it is very hostile to life.

. . . 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. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
* Douglas Adams as quoted in Richard Dawkins' Eulogy for Douglas Adams

The point is that we fit the universe, not the other way around. When a planet that can support life finally occurs around one of the billions of billions of stars then life arises, and is adapted the laws of the universe that brought it about.

So, how well suited to life is the universe. To start with I'll just use this list from Neil deGrasse Tyson that he used to show that there was stupid design in the universe, not intelligent:
Universe

• Most planet orbits are unstable
  
• Star formation is very inefficient (only 3% of a gas cloud actually makes it in to a star)
  
• Most places kill life instantly by heat cold or radiation
  
• Galaxy orbits will at some point bring you near a supernova whose radiation will wipe you out
  
• we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy
  
• It now appears the universe is one-way and will eventually wind down to oblivion
  

Earth

• Earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis
  
• Floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and lightning
  
• We can't live on 2/3rds of its surface and half of what is left is either too cold or too food poor
  
• Inner solar system is a shooting gallery (asteroids)
  
• There are mass extinctions (99% of all life is now extinct)
  
• It took 3.5 billion years to get multi-cellular life going from single cells (a very inefficient plan if the goal is us)
  

Humans

• Disease and faulty design out the wazoo (my paraphrase for such things as Leukemia, hemophilia , sickle cell, MS, epilepsy)
  
• very narrow view of the world due using to very limited visual spectrum
  
• very inefficient use of resources (we exhale most of the oxygen we inhale)
  
• very poor at detecting things that can kill us such as the colorless, tasteless, odorless gases like CO, CH4 CO2
  
• massive infant death, most of which we have no idea why it happens
  
• we eat drink and breathe through the same hole causing many to choke to death every year
  

Hopefully the above list puts to rest any notion of the universe being fabulously friendly to life and especially human life. It simply isn't. In fact it very hostile to it. (As an aside, should we conclude from this that God hypothesis is false? At least the version where the creator creates specifically for human life? After all if a human friendly universe is what he wanted then he did a very poor job. Perhaps not by itself but it sure seems like a strong piece of the puzzle... leaning that way... toward rejection)

If the atmosphere where not transparent to light in the so-called visible spectrum, and if the sun did not provide light in that region, then our eyes would not be of any use. But, does this mean that the sun and Earth were specifically designed with those properties because human eyes are sensitive to the visible spectrum of light? As silly as that suggestion sounds, we hear similar arguments today presented as evidence for intelligent design in the universe."
*God: The Failed Hypothesis, Victor Stenger

The notion that the constants of the laws of physics are somehow tuned for us also fails. First of all , as Lee Smolin and others have shown, the thing that the universe seems most tuned for is creating black holes. While it is clearly hostile to life it is perfect for creating black holes. I don't join Mr. Smolin in therefore hypothesizing that maybe that is the purpose of the universe. However, if you want to use the constants being fine tuned stuff then that is probably the conclusion you should draw. Life is a side effect of a universe fine tuned for creating black holes.

The fact is though, that the fine tuning arguments are flawed on a number of levels. First of all, they almost always appeal to probability. They say it is improbable for the values of the constants we have to come about by chance. Well, in order to make a probability claim they would have to know how many arrangements of constants lead to life. They would also need to know if laws other than the ones we have would lead to life. It may turn out that there are lots of laws and constants that lead to life and that , therefore, it isn't all that improbable after all. Saying that this particular form of life is improbable tells us nothing. If I get dealt a hand in a card game the probability for getting that specific hand is extremely low, but the probability of getting a hand of some kind is 100%. So what we need to know , but don't , is how likely is it to get some kind of life, not our specific kind.

It turns out though that the constants aren't all that fine tuned in the first place. Most of the people making those types of claims are making mistakes of various kinds. One would be using constants with dimensions (like the speed of light) and trying to point to how "precise" they are. Victor Stenger gives a good example of this by using a basketball analogy. What if I said, "if Michael Jordan had been 1 x 10^-16 light years shorter he wouldn't have been a basketball player." Does that mean that his height is fine tuned to one part in 10¹⁶? 1 x 10^-16 just means one meter by the way. So you have to be careful to not use dimensioned constants or if you do to only look at relationships to other constants.

Which brings us to the next point. Most of the analysis of constants changes one constant while keeping the others the same. But if you do the proper thing and let the other constants vary as well, it turns out that there are many configurations that lead to universes very similar to our own. It turns out there is a wide range of values that allow stars to form the heavy elements necessary for life (in fact it is almost inevitable with any set of contants that allow stars). There is also wide range of values that specifically allow carbon and oxygen to form. Last but not least one set of investigators have shown that a universe can be constructed that doesn't have the weak nuclear force but yet still can create stars and life! Not very fine tuned after all!

[cyborg_jim]

33. It also assumes that there are no second order restrictions on the valid variations of constants