It appears that we live on the knife-edge, where only the narrowest combination of values for the fundamental constants allow life, and especially conscious life, to arise.
PAUL SUTTER FROM SPACE.COM
The fundamental constants of nature seem perfectly tuned to allow life to exist. If they were even a little bit different, we simply wouldn’t be here. Given this grave existential fact, we are forced to ask a question: Why?
Our laws of physics contain several parameters with values that we cannot predict from theory alone. These are known as the fundamental constants. We can only go out and measure their values and then insert those values into our equations to make physics work. All told, there are about two dozen such numbers. They express such basic facts as the speed of light, the strength of the four fundamental forces, and the masses of elementary particles.
What’s especially unnerving about these numbers is how carefully crafted they appear to be. If any were different, even by a tiny amount, our universe would be radically altered. For example, stronger gravity would make stars burn out faster, preventing the rise of solar systems and life-bearing planets like Earth. If the speed of light were faster or the electron were heavier, stars wouldn’t even form in the first place. If Planck’s constant were different, the cosmos would be totally unrecognizable.
It appears that we live on the knife-edge, where only the narrowest combination of values for the fundamental constants allow life, and especially conscious life, to arise.
This is the heart of the fine-tuning argument: that the universe appears to favor the existence of life. So why are we here?