The Universe: "a put-up job"
Fascinating extracts from a new book, "The Goldilocks Enigma" by a guy called Paul Davies. His website describes him as a "theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, author and broadcaster."
The content has much to do with the topics discussed under "Science vs. Religion" below, bringing an awful lot of disparate sources to bear on the problems of the existence of the Universe.
These include, at opposite ends of the spectrum, particle physics and cosmology. The interesting thing is that in the Universe's early moments, the two fields were fundamentally connected, as the interactions of tiny particles dictated the future structure of the Universe. The "Goldilocks Enigma" is that articulated by astronomer Fred Hoyle, who said the Universe looks like "a put-up job" - i.e. it was designed for the purpose of supporting life. What he means is that the laws of physics are fine-tuned in such a way that it became possible for sentient life to eventually emerge. It doesn't seem plausible for such a thing to happen by chance, leading to many possibilities. God is one of them; the existence of a vast number of parallel Universes with our one being the only one where those fundamental constants were "just right"... The extracts available on the BBC website don't include it, but I wonder about a cyclical Universe - one characterised by an infinite series of Big Bangs followed by Big Crunches (the Universe collapses in on itself), each time with slight adjustments such that we eventually get the right conditions for life.
My mind's boggling a little now and I ought to do some work.
The content has much to do with the topics discussed under "Science vs. Religion" below, bringing an awful lot of disparate sources to bear on the problems of the existence of the Universe.
These include, at opposite ends of the spectrum, particle physics and cosmology. The interesting thing is that in the Universe's early moments, the two fields were fundamentally connected, as the interactions of tiny particles dictated the future structure of the Universe. The "Goldilocks Enigma" is that articulated by astronomer Fred Hoyle, who said the Universe looks like "a put-up job" - i.e. it was designed for the purpose of supporting life. What he means is that the laws of physics are fine-tuned in such a way that it became possible for sentient life to eventually emerge. It doesn't seem plausible for such a thing to happen by chance, leading to many possibilities. God is one of them; the existence of a vast number of parallel Universes with our one being the only one where those fundamental constants were "just right"... The extracts available on the BBC website don't include it, but I wonder about a cyclical Universe - one characterised by an infinite series of Big Bangs followed by Big Crunches (the Universe collapses in on itself), each time with slight adjustments such that we eventually get the right conditions for life.
My mind's boggling a little now and I ought to do some work.
posted by Peter at 09:45
7 Comments:
Hi, I'm very interested in this subject and I love to talk about it, so maybe I can help?
I like the cyclic universe myself, although I have a different derivation which notes that a true anthropic constraint on the forces would necessarily include the human evolutionary process.
Island, I took a quick look at your blog and, while I'm educated in Physics, my degree didn't take me to the level of most of what you're discussing. How would you define (in at least semi-layman's terms) a true anthropic constraint?
Okay, it needs to be understood that the first part of this is my interpretation, and then I'll explain how the anthropic principle came about, so that you'll understand why it is important.
I undertand it to be an energy conservation law. It is perpetually inherent thermodynamic structuring that enables the universe to "evolve" to higher orders of the same basic structure so that entropy may continue to increase indefinitely.
But you have to understand what brought the anthropic principle into being in the first place, and that falls from the following statement:
The observed structure of the universe occurs in dramatic contrast to the modeled expectation... so many fixed balance points that are commonly or "coincidentally" pointing directly toward carbon-based life indicate that there is some good physical reason for it that is somehow "specially" related to the existence of carbon-based life.
The anthropic coincidences start with the near perfectly flat structuring of the universe, and extend all the way to our local ecosystem. They all basically "unfolded" over time to produce carbon based life, and all of them are fixed to a balance between diametrically opposing <-|-> runaway tendencies.
For example, the near perfectly flat, balanced structuring of the universe, itself.
Anthropic balances always occur between extreme runaway tendencies that would lead to certain death if the balance ever got tipped... rather, if it could be tipped... which I seriously doubt, much to the chagrin of extremist environmentalists, I'm sure.
Anyway, I hope that gives you an idea of what it's about, and how I understand it to work.
We maybe "special" but only in terms of a specialized tool.
Went to a fascinating panel discussion last night at Imperial College, chaired by Paul Davies who wrote this new "Goldilocks Enigma" book. He had a string theorist, a cosmologist and a theologian there, all proposing models to explain the enigma.
The string theorist (Michael Duff) and the cosmologist (Bernard Carr) each looked at ways that advances in their respective fields might demonstrate the existence of a multiverse. This in itself would explain the Goldilocks Enigma by the anthropic principle - we're here because by definition we can only exist in one of the versions of the cosmos that's suited to life. Kevin, I agree that this doesn't remove your uncaused cause dilemma. However it would kick away a theological explanation of the Enigma.
What was slightly unsatisfying with the evening was that the two specialists weren't able to link their theories together; there was an indication from the cosmologist that somehow their work was linked due to questions of distance/time/scale (looking to distant space = looking far back in time = looking at a point when the universe was very tiny), however what I was interested to know was whether there was any equivalence between the types of multiverse that they proposed.
I'm just enjoying seeing a discussion of something not related to matters of law. I'm otherwise immured in the philosophical foundations of law and U.S. constitutional law.
A good discussion of the present state of physics:
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-10/p8.html
If you want to know about the current state of physics, and the "multiverse" then look-up Peter Woit, Lee Smolin, or John Horgan.
It's always funny to me how people use evidence that we're not here by accident to say that we are.
In other words, the most obvious implication isn't that there are going to be a bunch of universes that the *appearance of design* can get lost in.
The "appearance of design" is Lenny Susskind's terminolgy for it.
Lenny is the "father of string theory".
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