How can anyone say that this universe was designed for Humanity?

I may have to be corrected but as I understand it string theory is not there yet. It may well end up telling us that this is the only possible universe, maybe not. As I understand it is a work in progress at the moment. I may have to wait a decade or two for any answers it can supply.

This is news to me. Do you have a reference to "anti strings"? My understanding is that the theory postulates the other dimensions wrap around in a very small distance (about planck length) so they don't show up. Not that there are "anti string partners".You're talking as if you know something about this. What you're saying suggests less than the magazine article knowledge that I have.

I think we are all being streached by this. I'd be pleased if someone who actually understood this stuff dropped in
but ignorance doesn't seem to stop most of us so I'll post as if I know what I was talking about.One hope from string theory is that it may not need to "set" initial conditions. The nature of physical law and the universe may come out as natural consequences of the math.My comment that it isn't there yet is because it hasn't reached that point. If it did it may show that there can only be a universe like this one. (may not too ). That might put an end to the anthropic principle arguments.The reason for picking 10 or 11 dimenstions is that the math works out naturally in some way, it produces consisent results that behave like our universe. Please, please don't ask me to post any other the math. LOL I only had 4 years of honors math/physics -- there is no hope for me to understand this level of the stuff.

There are idiots who believe and idiots who don't. Like good and bad there doesn't seem to be much correlation.It is unfortunate that the unbelievers here get exposed to an unrepresentative sample of the believers. We get to expect the worst. If you read over some of the posts you'll see why.I, for one, take the position that it is idiotic to suggest that evolutionary theory isn't, in an overall way, correct. It is way beyond being something that be overthrown completely. This position gives one a bad attitude to start with. It is unfair to take it with any individual when they may have been subject to a lot of lies and been innocently ignorant.I'm kind of hoping there will be some interesting surprises as we learn more about the genetic makeup of more and more organisms and especially how changes arise.

What is the Eternal Inflation Model? This is another new one on me. Do you have a reference on the web describing it or could you give a summary? Thanks.

The inflationary model (which is not the "eternal inflationary model") says nothing at all about other universes. There is a purely speculative suggestion that other universes could have inflated after the big bang. Both string theory and this don't have any evidence for other universes (yet).String theory at least has some promise that comes from the behaviour of the math. I take what the experts say for this. It is a major area of research because it seems to be getting somewhere.

This is a spurious argument because:As noted we have a sample of one, you can't calculate any probablity at all from that. So we have no idea if it was highly unlikely or not. We also don't know if the physical laws can vary at all or by how much so we dont know if they are "picked" in any way at all.AndIf they condistions were not as they are we wouldn't be here. If we weren't we wouldn't be asking the question why are we here?( a good answer is "Where else whould we be?" lol )If the condistions we different in some ways then something different would have evolved to fit in "perfectly". If they were different in other ways nothing would evolve. No questions would be asked.So the conditions may not be "picked" so that we are here. We are here so the conditions have to be something like they are. You've got it backwards.

That's not the way I read it. What I think it says is that only our part of the universe is not still inflating. Not that there is an ongoing cration of universes.

quote:

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try to imagine what might have preceeded it, in many versions of inflation the answer is ``eternal inflation'': in most of the volume of the universe inflation is still happening, and our part of the expanding universe (a region encompassing far more than our entire cosmic horizon) arose from a tiny part of such a region.

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Thank you. Very interesting article.What I can't discern from it is how much is speculation and how much is actually required by the math.I once had a math-physics prof who did cosmology "on the side". He laughed and said it was fun because you could speculate all you wanted and there wasn't anything to prove you wrong.Since then (this was decades ago) we do have data that can pick and choose between speculations. I'm just wondering whether some others have moved into territory that allows for less restraint on the speculation.It does seem that it has some backing though. And Guth is someone who would know. I'll have to read more. Maybe Hawkings recent book would the the one.

Thanks for the references. Now I'm a bit hungry for more details. It might be hard to find something one level more deep without getting in way over my head though .I think it suggests that there are an infinite number of "pocket" universes formed. Thus the "universe designed for us question" goes away. There are lots of universes. Many won't be able to support any life. Some will be able to. We are, of course, in one that does. It is not designed that way it is just one of many that happened.

Me too!