Universal Perfection

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http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html

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The author played around with physical constants of different universes as far as 10 orders of magnitude out, to see what he got for the size of atoms, the lifetime of stars, etc. In almost all universes, it would be around long enough for some sort of life, however strange, to evolve.

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/*DNAunion*/ But the author's (Vic Stenger's) findings should not be taken at face value. On another board I easily refuted his similar "toy universe" model - which also attempted to show that huge changes could be made to the constants of nature without have a large impact of stellar lifespans, etc. - even though he is an astrophysicist (or something like that) and I am not.

/*DNAunion*/ As far as whether or not the constants of nature are tuned for the existence of life (or any life based on carbon and/or oxygen)...

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We conclude that a change of more than 0.5% in the strength of the strong interaction or more than 4% change in the strength of the Coulomb force would destroy either nearly all C[arbon] or all O[xygen] in every star. This implies that irrespective of stellar evolution the contributions of each star to the abundance of C or O in the ISM [interstellar medium] would be negligible. Therefore, for the above cases the creation of carbon-based life in our universe would be strongly disfavored. The anthropically allowed strengths of the strong and electromagnetic forces also constrain the Higgs vacuum expectation value and yield tighter constraint on the quark masses than do the constraints on light nuclei. Therefore, the results of this work are relevant not only for the anthropic cosmological principle, but also for the mathematical design of fundamental elementary particle theories. (Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and its Abundance in the Universe, H. Oberhummer, A. Scoto, & H. Schlattl, Science, vol 289 no 5476, July 7 2000, p 90)

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/*DNAunion*/ That touched on the electromagnetic and strong forces...here's some on the weak nuclear force (and yes, I realize the a single point may be restated multiple times in the quotes).

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Had the nuclear weak force been appreciably stronger then the Big Bang would have burned all hydrogen to helium. There could then be neither water nor long-lived stable stars. (John Leslie,
Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989, p4)

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... the extreme weakness of the nuclear weak force. The weak force [is what] controls proton-proton fusion, a reaction 10^18 times slower than one based on the other nuclear force, the strong nuclear force. Were it not for this, ‘essentially all the matter in the universe would have been burned to helium before the first galaxies started to condense’, so there would be neither water nor long-lived stable stars, which are hydrogen-burning. (Helium-burning stars remain stable for times much too short for the evolution of living beings as we know them). (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989, p34)

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Making [the weak nuclear force] appreciably weaker would again have destroyed the hydrogen: the neutrons formed at early times would not have decayed into protons. (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989, p4)

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Again, [the weak nuclear] force had to be chosen appropriately if neutrinos were to interact with stellar matter both weakly enough to escape from a supernova’s collapsing core and strongly enough to blast its outer layers into space so as to provide material for making planets. (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989, p4)

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Again, the weak force’s weakness makes our sun ‘burn its hydrogen gently for billions of years instead of blowing up like a bomb’. (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989, p34)

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Had the weak force been appreciably stronger then the Big Bang’s nuclear burning would have proceeded past helium and all the way to iron. Fusion-powered stars would then be impossible. (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989, p34)

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Notice, though, that the weak force could not have been much weaker without again giving us an all-helium universe. (There are thus two threats to hydrogen, one setting the upper and the other the lower limit to the values of the weak force compatible with life as we know it). For at early moments neutrons were about as common as protons, things being so hot that the greater masses of the neutrons, which made them harder to generate, had little importance. The weak force, however, can make neutrons decay into protons. And it was just sufficiently strong to ensure that when the first atoms formed there were enough excess protons to yield roughly 70 per cent hydrogen. Without a proton excess there would have been helium only. (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989, p34)

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Again, weakening the weak force would ruin the proton-proton and carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycles which make stars into sources of the heat, the light, and the heavy elements (all those heavier than helium) which Life appears to need. (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989, p34)

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How do these heavy elements get to be outside of stars, to form planets and living things? The weak force helps explain this. When stars explode as Type II supernovae they lose their heavy-element-rich outer layers. (Also, elements heavier than iron-[56], which play an important role in Earth’s organisms, can be synthesized in supernova explosions only). Now, these layers are blasted off by neutrinos which interact with them via the weak force alone. Its extreme weakness, which allows neutrinos to pass through our planet more easily than bullets through air, permits also their escape from a supernova’s collapsing core. Still the force is just strong enough to hurl into space the outer-layer atoms needed for constructing astronomers! Strong enough, also, to fuse electrons with protons during the core’s collapse, thus enabling the collapse to continue. The result is an implosion whose violence — the core shrinks thousands of times in under a second — gives rise to a gigantic explosion.

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While the calculations are hard, it seems a safe bet that weakening the weak force by a factor of ten would have led to a universe consisting mainly of helium and in which the life-producing explosions could not occur. (John Leslie, Universes, Routledge Publishing, 1989,p34-35)

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[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-01-2003]

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Rrhain: Who said life requires oxygen?

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/*DNAunion*/ Uhm, authors of all biology texts.Oxygen is a required component of sugars (such as ribose and deoxyribose found in RNA and DNA respectively), proteins (all amino acids have at least one carboxyl group), and nucleic acids (in addition to the oxygens in the pentoses, oxygen is also a component of the nitrogenous bases and the phosphate groups).

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Rrhain: If the universe were different, then we wouldn't be here. Instead, something else would be.

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/*DNAunion*/ Really? I'd like to see the empirical evidence that supports your claim. (Are you sure that what you asserted as fact is nothing more than just an unsupported assumption?)[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-01-2003]

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JustinCy: Apparently, since life exists. Isn't it also tuned to produce giant gaseous planets, nebula, atoms, oceans, etc. (Sorry for poor examples, imagination doesn't work well in the morning)
Isn't that just like saying, "The universe it tuned in such a way to make everything that exists exist"? Seems like tautology, and I don't think any important point can be made from it.

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/*DNAunion*/ I disagree. Among the items you listed - and indeed among all known items in the Universe - life is unique and special: a living organism is the most complex, most highly organized, most informationally rich, and most specified collective unit of matter in the entire Universe. Since life stands far above the other items you listed in terms of organization and so on, it requires special conditions that the others don't require: those special conditions, in turn, require an explanation.

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technocore: Life is something that can replicate and has a form of awareness (the abillity feel its surroundings at some level). To do so it needs energy. There are a multitude of ways to concieve something that replicates and is not made from carbon.

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/*DNAunion*/ There are a multitude of ways to conceive of all kinds of things, many of which are completely silly (people once conceived of bat people living on the moon). Being able to conceive something does not make it reality, or even plausible.Now why don't you actually support your position - instead of simply stating it - by showing us a system (other than biological life as we know it) that would classify as life, and that arose by undirected, non-biological processes alone?[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-01-2003]

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Mike the whiz: I also do not think you can get order from some sort of big bang, which I think would make a big mess. Did any bomb you have heard of create order.lol

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/*DNAunion*/ Order arises in the Universe, by undirected and non-biological processes alone, on a regular basis. The molecules in a cloud of gas are less ordered than they are in a spherical star: gravity "pulls" on the gas molecules and imposes order on them.Simple order is not the key here.

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Nosy ned: What if the conditions here were not "just right"? The answer is easy: we would not be here. The question doesn't mean very much since if we can ask it the conditions are "just right". There isn't any other possible answer.

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/*DNAunion*/ I disagree. The fact that we exist is in need of an explanation and so the question is meaningful. Here's a snippet from my personal notes.*********************************
However, those who suggest that our existence itself is reason for us to not be surprised at the fine tuning we observe - and that our existence itself is enough for us to not question the probability of the events and conditions that led to our existence - are very much mistaken. To say that Were the conditions different than they were, then we would not be here to question them may be sound logic, but it is not an explanation at all for the origin of the fine-tuning for life that we observe in the universe. It is merely a self-evident observation; one that lacks any explanatory power.

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Since the Generic Chance Elimination Argument is explicated just as well by an example as in abstract, let us consider an illustration due to Richard Swinburne. Swinburne (1979, p. 138), in critiquing the anthropic principle, relates the following story about a mad kidnapper:

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Suppose that a madman kidnaps a victim and shuts him in a room with a cardshuffling machine. The machine shuffles ten packs of cards simultaneously and then draws a card from each pack and exhibits simultaneously the ten cards. The kidnapper tells the victim that he will shortly set the machine to work and will exhibit its first draw, but that unless the draw consists of an ace of hearts from each pack, the machine will simultaneously set off an explosion which will kill the victim, in consequence of which he will not see which cards the machine drew. The machine is then set to work, and to the amazement and relief of the victim the machine exhibits an ace of hearts drawn from each pack. The victim thinks that this extraordinary fact needs an explanation in terms of the machine having been rigged in some way. But the kidnapper, who now reappears, casts doubt on this suggestion. It is hardly surprising, he says, that the machine [drew] only aces of hearts. You could not possibly see anything else. For you would not be here to see anything at all, if any other cards had been drawn. But of course the victim is right and the kidnapper is wrong. There is indeed something extraordinary in need of explanation in ten aces of hearts being drawn. The fact that this peculiar order is a necessary condition of the draw being perceived at all makes what is perceived no less extraordinary and in need of explanation. [Richard Swinburne, 1979, p. 138] (William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p185-186)

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Rei: The analogy is faulty. That would be the equivalent analogy of taking a lifeform from a random universe and placing it in a random, different universe and seing if it survived.

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/*DNAunion*/ What?????? Where'd you come up with that???

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Rei: That's not what we're talking about here.

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/*DNAunion*/ And that's not what the analogy is talking about either.

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Rei: As I referenced in my earlier post, random universes will at the very least survive long enough for complexity - however different - to arise.

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/*DNAunion*/ Yes, you stated that unsupported and untestable presumption previously. So what? Are you claiming that it is indisputable fact...that we are all forced to accept it as true?[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-01-2003]

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NosyNed: As Rei notes, you card shuffling analogy is off base. For one thing, in the analogy we are told that the machine ARE able to draw any cards at random. As I pointed out we don't yet know if any other possible universe can exist. We don't know how much room there is to wiggle the physical constants.

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/*DNAunion*/ So you both agree and disagree with Rei.I agree that the analogy is based on the assumption that the values for the constants of nature could take on a vast variety of combinations. But that is a working assumption that mainstream scientists use: it's not a "Creationist" position.(Besides, if the constants of nature had to take on only those values that are compatible with life, then some would argue that to be an even greater "predestined coincidence" and a stronger argument for design).

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NosyNed: Secondly, we have forgotten someones comment that the universe isn't fine tuned for us. We are fine tuned to it!

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/*DNAunion*/ I haven't forgotten about it - I simply don't accept it as any kind of explanation for the "problem" being discussed. For example, it is based on the unsupported assumption that life could exist without oxygen, carbon, etc.

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Rei: Because your analogy only works if this is the only type of universe that can contain life; it assumes its conclusion, by having the person killed in every other scenario.

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/*DNAunion*/ Wrong, the analogy does NOT assume its conclusion. The analogy is not meant to conclude that only one universe can support life. That is a premise the analogy is based on, not its conclusion (there is a difference between a premise and a conclusion).

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Rei: This may be the only type of universe that can contain LAWKI, but to claim that it's the only type of universe that can contain life is quite unsupported by you.

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/*DNAunion*/ You've got it backwards.All empirical observations (which are restricted the one observed universe) to date show that all life is life as we know it, and requires carbon and oxygen (which in turn require fairly specific values for certain constant of nature).Your position - that life not as we know it does exist or even could exist (in some hypothetical universe that cannot be examined or tested) - is the one without any empirical observations whatsoever.[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-01-2003]

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Rei: P.S. - Why the pretentious code comments around your name? We know its you writing, you don't need to clarify. /*Rei*/

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/*DNAunion*/ They aren't pretentious: they're explicit labels used for clarity's sake.Since in the past a few others have wanted me to omit my handle, I started putting it in multi-line C-style comments (the /* ... */). That way, whoever wants to can act like a compiler and ignore it.[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-01-2003]

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Technocore: As for self-replicating enteties, all i need to do is to construct my own universe in a computer. Why dont you take a look at the "game of life"?

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/*DNAunion*/ I already have. It is an unimpressive computer game that uses a two-dimensional array to represent the positions of organisms with some rules for the creation and deletion of organisms based on neighboring cells in the matrix; once the correct rules were found and a correct starting setup used, some figures would amazingly reappear throughout a run of the program. The organisms don’t self-replicate: they are poofed into existence with a single line of code. It’s not even the organisms that amazingly reappear, but shapes. Finally, there’s not even any self-replication of shapes: in fact, there’s no self-replication in the system at all.

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Technocore: To make something logically self-replicating all that is needed are two different logical rules.

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/*DNAunion*/ First, I don’t necessarily want to move from discussing actual life to discussing life as you define it and that exists in your imagination. Second, you made another unsupported assertion.

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Technocore: By combining these in different ways you can construct every other convievable information-construct, like multiplication, a computer game, an artificial intelligence, or a self-replicating system.

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/*DNAunion*/ Another unsupported assertion.

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Technocore: The same can obviously be done with metal and springs, thogh it would be a really slow version. Or atoms of your choice. A self replicating system can be made out of of any sets of atoms.

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/*DNAunion*/ Another unsupported assertion.

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/*DNAunion*/ Your position - that life not as we know it does exist or even could exist (in some hypothetical universe that cannot be examined or tested) - is the one without any empirical observations whatsoever.

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Rei: Nor are there any observations to contradict it.

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/*DNAunion*/ Nor are there any observations to contradict Clingons, Vulcans, or Jedi Knights with their minichlorines (or whatever) that provide them with "The Force". Will you start using these hypothetical life forms to support your argument next?

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Rei: Of course all life discovered so far is similar - it's all in the same universe, and we've only looked at the tiniest fraction of it. So?

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/*DNAunion*/ So....all empirical evidence to date shows only one form of life, based on organic molecules such as nucleic acids, proteins, etc., which in turn require carbon and oxygen (as well as other things).An opposing position — that life unlike that we know — does or could exist is an unsupported presumption.

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Rei: We're not discussing this universe.

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/*DNAunion*/ What? Of course we are discussing this universe.

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Rei: Back to the basics here: You need to evidence that it is only realistic that any form of life would exist only in this universe.

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/*DNAunion*/ No I don’t.One of my points, which I need to support, is that this universe is fine tuned for life whether or not trillions of trillions of other universes exist. Having a vast ensemble of universes is a potential explanation for the fine tuning we observe: it doesn’t remove the fact of fine tuning.

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Rei: Carbon and oxygen don't allow life. The properties of carbon and oxygen allow life. While this may seem like a trivial distinction (such as "Guns don't kill people, bullets fired from guns kill people"), it is critical to this discussion: carbon and oxygen themselves need not even exist in any form - only the types of complex interactions that we see in organic chemistry, which in our universe are partially due to the interactions of carbon and oxygen.

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/*DNAunion*/ Okay, so what other items in the Universe possess the properties of carbon and oxygen that allow for life? None. So all empirical evidence we have shows that both carbon and oxygen are required for life.Once again, your argument is not based on empirical evidence, but on imagination/speculation.PS: I am not claiming "I am right and you are wrong": we don't know which position is actually true. However, based on repeatable, testable, empirical observations to date, my position is supported while yours is not.[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-02-2003]