The Russell Stannard Questions: Life

The following questions (Q) are taken verbatim from those poised by Russell Stannard in his 2010 book The End of Discovery [are we approaching the boundaries of the knowable?]; Oxford University Press, Oxford. I consider these typical of the sorts of modern Big Questions that are part and parcel of the philosophy of modern science, especially physical science.

My answers are based mainly with the thought of our being in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe that has been constructed by one or more Supreme Programmers. However, some of the answers apply regardless of what the nature of our ultimate reality is.

Q. Why is the universe life-friendly?

A. The universe is both bio-friendly and not bio-friendly. 99.999% (add a few more 9’s here) of the cosmic environment is decidedly bio-unfriendly and would snuff you out so quick-smart you wouldn’t know what hit you. Of course the cosmos is also bio-friendly otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. If you reject a supernatural explanation, that leaves coincidence, a multiverse, or software. Coincidence is stretching things since there are just so many dials that have to be set to a very narrow range. The multiverse appeals to probability statistics – think of those millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters one of whom will type “Hamlet” word-for-word – eventually. That leaves software, or in other words a Supreme Programmer programing our universe in a bio-friendly way. 

Q. Is there extraterrestrial life, and if so, how do we humans stand in comparison as regards intellectual capacity?

A. Given the vastness of the cosmos, and the sheer number of galaxies in the observable cosmos, and the numbers of stars per galaxy with associated solar systems and the number of planets per solar system not to mention possible rogue/orphan planets and how interstellar cosmic organic chemistry associated with life is, well, cosmic, etc., you would have to be pretty brave to bet the family farm arguing Planet Earth being the proverbial cosmic IT when it comes to life. Even going up the chain from the origin of life ‘living’ molecules to unicellular life to multicellular life to intelligent life to technologically advanced life forms and advocating extreme difficulty in getting from one step to the next step on up the line, there must be – if you’re a betting person – millions of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations throughout the cosmos and a goodly number in our galaxy too. Further, we humans are the new boys on the block, so the odds are that any other extraterrestrial intelligences will have been around way longer that we have, and thus have evolved greater intellectual capacity that we have yet achieved. However, the interesting bit is that once intelligence is achieved, natural selection gives way to artificial selection, and part of that artificial selection might ultimately be the transition from biological intelligence to artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence which will further evolve via artificial selection as machine intelligence designs ever better machine intelligences.



A Lifeless Universe: Part One

You know and I know that at this point in time, our Universe is inhabited. Even if nowhere else in the cosmos, Planet Earth is host to terrestrial life, from the humble bacteria through to plants, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. In terms of sheer numbers of species and total biomass, microbes and insects rule the roost, though humans alone pat themselves on the back. However, the Universe didn’t start off with any life, especially human life. This puts the kibosh on a certain brand of quantum metaphysics, the brand that encompasses the role of the observer and the role played by probability.

I think everyone would agree that before they were thought of in anyone’s philosophy, the Universe existed. You’d agree that the Universe existed before humans existed, unless you’re one of those fundamentalists who interpret the Book of Genesis literally, and even then there were a few days for the Universe to enjoy a pre-human existence. If you’re not one of those extreme right wing all-things-literal Christians, then you’d go along with the Universe existing before life, any kind of life, arose on Terra Firma (or anywhere else in the cosmos for that matter). You’d also have to go along with the notion that the Universe existed before the Earth (and therefore the Sun and solar system) existed, since the parent (the Universe) has to exist before the offspring (Earth, Sun and solar system). In fact, to bring this string to its logical conclusion, the Universe existed even before our home parent galaxy, the Milky Way existed.

The origin of our Universe via that Big Bang event was roughly 13.7 billion years ago. Our own galaxy didn’t come into its own until three plus billion years post Big Bang. Planet Earth (plus Sun and solar system) came about some 4.5 billion years ago; the first stirrings of what we’d call life happened on Earth within a half a billion years of Earth’s origin event. If you want to equate life in the Universe with life on Earth (terrestrial biology is the proverbial IT), then the Universe has been lifeless for the first 9.7 billion years of its existence.

Our Universe is bio-friendly otherwise we wouldn’t be here to discuss the issue. That’s often termed the Weak Anthropic Principle. A bio-friendly Universe is a Goldilocks Universe, albeit a dangerous Goldilocks Universe with lots of places that are too hot or too cold or otherwise not quite right and not quite bio-friendly. But, any port in a storm.

But before life was thought of in anyone’s (not that there was anyone) philosophy, we’re certain that:

* Chemistry still happened.

* Stars still shined and photons still did their photon thing.

* Gravity still grabbed; Black Holes still formed.

* Radioactivity decay still proceeded.

* Neutrinos still whizzed their merry way along the cosmic byways and pathways.

* Electrons still quantum hopped from orbit to orbit giving off and absorbing energy.

* Quarks still carried on their threesome relationships inside protons and neutrons.

Okay, there clearly was a time when the cosmos was lifeless and the above were cosmic truisms. There clearly might come such a time again if Planet Earth is the proverbial IT when it comes to the life part of “life, the Universe and everything”. Humans aren’t immortal; Planet Earth isn’t immortal, and as I said earlier, the Universe can be a dangerous place. Perhaps humans don’t even need assistance from the Universe at large to bring about their extinction and the extinction of all life on Earth. If life on Earth goes kaput, then:

* Hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, blizzards, floods and droughts will still happen on Terra Firma.

* Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, avalanches, Ice Ages, tsunamis, meteor impacts, erosion, mountain building, and continental drift will still happen on Terra Firma.

* The tides will still ebb and flow; the Moon still waxes and wanes.

Now the $64,000 question is why is a lifeless Universe of any interest whatsoever? The answer is “observers”, or in the case of a lifeless Universe, “no observers”.

Many, especially the religious, think the Universe had a purpose, and that was to be fruitful and produce life, intelligence and consciousness, a way of the Universe being able to contemplate its own navel. That’s often termed the Strong Anthropic Principle. Most scientists give that the thumbs down on the grounds that the Universe just is. The Universe doesn’t have a consciousness, or a deity controlling it, and therefore the cosmos can’t have a purpose to its existence, nor a ways and means that it can consciously direct itself toward such a goal.

However, many quantum physicists suggest that the Universe cannot have achieved a reality until such time as observers (life) appeared to give the Universe reality. That’s often termed the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. The idea is that all possible realities exist in a state of superposition and only one becomes reality when someone actually observes and forces the numerous possibilities down to one certainty. All possible realities are grouped together and termed the probability wave-function or wave of probability. When crunch-comes-crunch and someone peeks, Mother Nature is forced to make a decision, the wave-function collapses and one and only one certainty results.

Until life appeared then, the Universe was in a superposition of all possible realities, a wave-function that was a composite of all possibilities. That first observer hence collapsed the wave-function of near infinite possibilities down to one reality. Or is that just so much bovine fertilizer?

Now between the time of the creation, that Big Bang event some 13.7 billion years ago, and the time of that first observer arising, the cosmos expanded and evolved. Stars formed, solar systems formed, galaxies formed, and so on. Now all that suggests that there was one reality, one chain of events, and a causality that was universal – the Universe was not in a composite of all possible states of reality even while no life existed. It’s silly to think that that ever first proto-cell billions of years ago determined the single structure or reality of the Universe we see around us today. For observers to have come into being, the Universe had to have already been in a state of being. Therefore, the Copenhagen Interpretation of all things quantum is utter nonsense.

So, does the Universe exist even if nobody is looking? Yes! Did the Universe exist even when there was nobody to look? Yes! Are observers relevant? No!

Having settled the observer question, let’s move on to the next phase.

To be continued…

Multiroads to the Multiverse: Part Two

If Mother Nature can create one Universe (ours), Mother Nature can create more than one universe – a Multiverse! The concept of a Multiverse, that there exists more than one universe, that is our Universe – perhaps an infinite number of them existing sequentially in time, or at one go in space, maybe both, is one of the hottest topics in current cosmology.

At the outset, there’s no law of physics (or even of God) that says that there can be (or must be) one and only one universe, our Universe.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Multiverse Solves These Puzzles:

In reality, the idea of a Multiverse is more a logical outcome of current thinking and evolving understanding of various discoveries and trends in modern quantum/particle physics and cosmology, relative to being a tool used to explain actual data or anomalies or observations. The basic reason is that other universes, if existing, will tend to be so far away from us in time and/or in space as to exert no influence on what we observe; what data we collect. That’s not to say that the concept of a Multiverse, in one guise or another, can’t be used to help account for actual or philosophical anomalies.

For example, if the computer simulation of our and by extension any Multiverse is correct, that accounts for why there are apparently two sets of independent and incompatible software physics (quantum and classical) running the cosmos.

A computer generated Multiverse (lots of different computer generated simulations coupled with possible multiple copies of each) is in one sense a copout in that it can be used to explain anything. You can account for all data, all anomalies, all weirdness, everything natural and everything supernatural, everything logical and illogical, everything possible, and for that matter impossible. In a computer generated and simulated universe, you can indeed believe six impossible things before breakfast – ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or rather ‘Through the Looking Glass’ rules – OK? The existence of ‘impossible things’ does not of necessity invalidate the possibility however.

The concept of a Multiverse does provide the ways and means of examining other possible origins for our own Universe, which currently is (the standard Big Bang event) that first there was nothing and the there was something.

The there’s the Anthropic Principle: In order to explain why our Universe is so fine-tuned in terms of the laws and relationships of physics that make our universe life-friendly, it is necessary to either postulate one hell of an incredible luck of the draw, or a supernatural creator being who exists outside of space-time. The Multiverse solves the quandary by postulating that with so many universes in existence, with so many combinations of possible laws and relations of physics, that at least one universe, based on sheer chance alone, would be life-friendly. Since we can only exist in a life-friendly universe, the Multiverse helps explain our very existence, without having to resort to bucking incredible improbability or relying on the supernatural. 

Double Slit Experiment: If you fire one photon, say one every minute, at two parallel slits with a photographic plate behind them, you might expect that plate to show, eventually, two blobs of light – one behind each slit, as each individual photon bullet passed through one, or the other, slit. However, what you get is instead a classic interference pattern – alternating light bands with dark bands. Why is this so? Rather, how can this be? Since the one per minute photons aren’t apparently acting like individual bullets, and yet since the only thing that can possibly cause classic wave interference is the presence of other, in addition to these one per minute photon bullets, photons, then where did these other photons come from?  A logical explanation is that these photons are photons that enter or interact with our Universe from another parallel universe(s).

Time Travel Paradoxes: If time travel to the past is possible, and there is only one universe, our Universe, then paradoxes can arise. You can go back in time and murder your mother before you were conceived, which means you were never born, so you couldn’t have gone back in time and murdered your mother, which means you were born…  However, if you travel back in time to another universe, part of the Multiverse, and kill what for all appearances looks exactly like your real mother, but is in fact a parallel universe copy or look-alike, then there is no paradox, because your real biological mother, in the universe in which you were born and raised, remains alive.  

Variations on the Many Worlds Interpretation Theme:

There’s a variation that could apply to the Multiverse theme via the Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum. In the Many Worlds scenario, absolutely all possibilities are realized within any given ‘moment’ within the timeline. Each universe within the Multiverse has the additional complication (or added attraction) of having to jump through the Many Worlds hoops. So, to use a simple example, in one universe (A) within the Multiverse, you flip a coin and its heads. Coming to that fork in the road, a choice of heads or tails, that universe then splits into two, and you have flipped tails in the counterpart (B). Both possibilities have been realized. However, it is just as probable that there are enough universes within the Multiverse such that there was another universe (C) where you performed the identical flipping exercise and the coin came up tails (as in universe B). Postulating a Many Worlds Interpretation where there’s a split and you toss heads (universe D), well that’s already something that’s happened (in universe A) – not in a Many Worlds scenario, but in another actual physical universe. Therefore, what need for any Many Worlds interpretations at all? 

I’m not however entirely sure this apparent equivalence will sit well with quantum physicists, because I’m not entirely sure this is what quantum physicists mean by the phrase ‘Many Worlds’ (indeed, lots of quantum physicists deny any such interpretation at all exists – it’s too big an ask for them). However, it seems to deal with the issue of That Cat! In two separate physical universes you have Schrodinger’s Cat (in the box which has been constructed to have a 50/50 chance of killing it within one hour) experiment. Identical cats; identical setups; identical observers (and they can be identical because the fundamental bits that make them all up are identical – all electrons (neutrons, protons, etc.) are 100% clones of each other – absolutely identical). In one universe, the observer observes the cat alive after one hour; the other universe, well it’s the demise of the feline. Neither universe has to split into two to cater for both possibilities of a living cat, and a dead cat. All possibilities have been exhausted without resorting to the requirement of a Many Worlds either/or split.

While I have little difficulty coming to terms with an infinite (or as close to infinite as makes no odds) number of universes (the Multiverse) that have collectively existed since the get-go in order to cater for all possibilities, I have some trouble coming to accept the idea that (Many) Worlds are created in an ongoing manner, as spin-offs, in response to evolving events that require this choice or that choice or the next choice. The difficulty, which I’ve never seen addressed in any books I’ve read on the subject is, where does all the additional matter/energy for the extra world – actually universe - come from? If a whole new universe is created to allow for the existence of both a cat that’s alive and a dead cat (in that cat-in-the-box thought experiment), that additional universe (to cater for the other option) seems to be a free lunch – something created from nothing. That seems to be a violation of the conservation of matter/energy. That’s much too big an ask for me to swallow! Therefore, I vote solely for the Multiverse, which because of the sheer numbers involved, allows for the incorporation of the Many Worlds Interpretation as a bonus. The only real difference I can see between the Multiverse and the Many Worlds Interpretation is that with Many Worlds, the outcomes (all possibilities realized) is certainty; with the Multiverse it’s only probable or possible.

Further recommended readings:

Carr, Bernard (Editor); Universe or Multiverse?; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2007:

Gribbin, John; In Search of the Multiverse;

Allen Lane, London

; 2009:

Kaku, Michio; Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos; Penguin Books, London; 2005:

Rees, Martin; Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others; Free Press, London; 2002:

Vilenkin, Alex; Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes; Hill & Wang, New York; 2006:

Wolf, Fred Alan; Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds; Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York; 1988:

Cosmic Fun: Random Ramblings in Modern Cosmology: The Goldilocks Universe

The following ideas are primarily mine alone, the good, the bad and the ugly, albeit based on and influenced by reading multi volumes of tomes in modern cosmology. However, I’m also quite sure that numerous others have quite independently thought somewhat similar, if not exact, thoughts as well. Therefore, I’ll take no credit for being right, if I don’t get blamed for being wrong!

THE GOLDILOCKS UNIVERSE REVISITED

As noted in an earlier blog, our Universe is a Goldilocks Universe, in as much as the physical parameters that make it up allow life-as-we-know it (such as you and me) to exist. There are three standard explanations why this is so. The first is dumb luck. Even in poker you sometimes get dealt a royal flush or four aces first go! Of course that stretches credibility a tad.

The second is the concept of an intelligent designer – “God” if you will. God created the Universe and the parameters it has because God wanted the Universe to be populated with life forms that would worship He, She or It.

The third is the concept of the Multiverse. There are umpteen zillion universes out there, all natural, all with different physical parameters, some of which will permit the evolution of life-as-we-know-it. It’s therefore not surprising that we exist in such a bio-friendly Universe. If you deal a zillion poker hands, sooner or later you’ll get a royal flush or four aces! Just as it takes probably billions of planets around millions of stars to give a near certain probability that at least one planet will be a Goldilocks planet, so too it probably takes millions to billions of universes to guarantee a Goldilocks universe. Fortunately, there seems to be lots of ways to create universes, or an ultimate Multiverse.

However, I have a fourth suggestion. That is, no matter what the physical parameters of our Universe happened to be, be it akin to a royal flush or one pair or zip, even if such parameters don’t allow for life-as-we-know-it (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen-based), perhaps ‘life’ of another sort (life-not-as-we-know-it) will come to pass. In other words, any Universe will produce life, not only possibly life, but inevitably life. Science fiction is full of life-not-as-we-know-t, from Hoyle’s ‘Black Cloud’ to ‘Star Trek’s’ Horta to Asimov’s ‘Soft Ones’ and Forward’s aliens who live on a neutron star.

Thusly, my suggestion is no matter what the physical parameters of a universe happen to be, ‘life’ will find a way. Each poker hand has an equal chance of being dealt; nearly every possible poker hand is a bio-winner. Nearly every universe is a Goldilocks universe – for something – but that something would be wondering why they lucked out!

Dial L for Life*

You exist. You are a biological life form. Therefore, the Universe must be the sort of place that has the sorts of physics that permits the origin and evolution of life forms. That that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t exist. Now the question is, why is this - our bio-friendly Universe – so?

The fact that you exist makes some people quite uncomfortable. Specifically, the fact that the Universe – translated, the laws, constants and relationships of physics – is bio-friendly and allows for the origin, development, evolution, and overall the existence of living things makes some cosmologists and physicists uncomfortable. Current explanations of why the Universe should be bio-friendly don’t sit well with some subsets of this professional community.

Well, we’re here, and so are they, and so are millions of other species (past as well as present), so they just gotta deal with the situation as it presents itself.

Before we get to the ways and means they deal with as explanations for the bio-friendly situation, and why those ways and means can be uncomfortable, I need to point out that all these same laws, constants and relationships of physics also can be very bio-unfriendly – in spades; in the extreme.

Take the entire volume of our observable universe (we don’t know what the volume is of the Universe as a whole). What fraction of that volume is bio-friendly to you? If you were somehow transported at random, by chance, to some other coordinates somewhere in that expanse of space, what are the odds you’d live to tell the tale? Bugger all! Winning a million dollar lottery a million times in a row I’d be happy to give you better odds on. In the vacuum of space, nobody can hear you die; if you happen to hit a star, nobody will see you fry.

Even Planet Earth is largely bio-unfriendly. Ten kilometres straight up, you’re dead; ditto ten kilometres straight down. You’re odds don’t improve greatly if you’re in your birthday suit and land in Antarctica, or the Sahara Desert, and how long can you tread water if dumped in the middle of the North Atlantic?

So, 99.999 (add a few more nines and then some) percent of our observable universe is NOT bio-friendly. The only place you know for sure of surviving, and even then maybe not for very long, is just on the very thin surface of the third rock outwards from Mother Sun.

Now that’s a rather bio-unfriendly observable universe to you, and other terrestrial complex life forms like cats and dogs – even cockroaches. It’s not quite as bio-unfriendly to simpler life forms, although the odds don’t improve all that much. Some microbes might survive inside outer space, but they’re not going to thrive, far less reproduce, and otherwise live the good microbial life. Now some non-terrestrial abodes in our solar system (and presumably other extra-solar systems) might be suitable habitats to our microbial ancestral kin, so from their point of view, the observable universe is a slightly more bio-friendly place – but suitable bio-friendly real estate is still pretty marginal relative to the overall volume of same.  

Anyway, the bottom line is that the Universe is ultimately a bio-friendly place. How is this possible? And what are the uncomfortable aspects of explaining this?

Firstly, we assume that there was an alternative. Our Universe could have turned out to be an absolutely bio-unfriendly place. For sake of visualization, imagine that all those laws, constants and relationships part and parcel of physics are all represented by dials on this machine that ultimately runs or controls the Universe. Let’s say that all the dials that control the Universe (and its bio-friendliness) are all set at position #5. All dials at setting #5 make for a bio-friendly Universe.

We can perform imaginary thought experiments, a ‘what if’ game, by altering the position or setting of any one of those dials. Say one dial represents gravity. If we turn the gravity dial to #4, the force of gravity is weaker. If we turn the gravity dial to setting #6, gravity is stronger.

It turns out, nastily so, that changing the positions of even any one of the dials by even a small amount makes our Universe 100% bio-unfriendly. The position of the dials is fine-tuned to an incredible degree of precision to allow for a bio-friendly Universe; to allow for you and for me and for cats and dogs and cockroaches too.

Take the gravity dial. If gravity were ever so slightly weaker, stuff wouldn’t clump together; interstellar gas wouldn’t coalesce into stars, and if stars wouldn’t form, then no life. Life needs stars, because ultimately stars cook the heavier elements out of which life is made – like carbon and oxygen and nitrogen.

If gravity had been a shade greater, then the newly Big Bang expanding universe would have been aborted quick-smart as expansion would have turned into a contraction in fairly short order resulting in a Big Crunch. There would never have been time for life to even get started before Armageddon!  

So, how did all the dials get stuck on the #5 position?

Well, maybe it all just happened by a random throw of the dice – all by chance. Some combination had to come up and bio-friendliness was one whose number came up. That makes some professionals queasy or uncomfortable in the same way as explaining someone winning a million dollar jackpot a million times in a row would. The odds are just too great against the possibility.

Well, maybe our bio-friendly Universe was the outcome of an intelligent designer. It was deliberately created to be bio-friendly, just like we humans can design a car to be driver-friendly. Lots of gadgets are advertised as being user-friendly. Why not therefore an entire Universe? Of course the agent(s), the designer(s), would have to have been outside our space-time continuum since presumably he / she / it / they existed before the creation of our space-time continuum. I guess that means that creator person(s) or thing(s) must have been supernatural in origin – God, in other words. Now the God concept or hypothesis, or intelligent designer theory also puts some professionals’ teeth on edge. Lots of folk reject that idea; lots of folk embrace that idea too.

Lastly, what if there are lots of universes – I means lots and lots and lots of them. Nearly all of them would have few, if any, dials set at #5. Maybe several have nearly all dials at #5 – close, but close don’t count. However, based on sheer probability, a couple, maybe just one, maybe two or three – a select few, won the all #5 dial lottery. Alas, multiple universes, the Multiverse concept, doesn’t sit well with all and sundry either. If you have lots of universes, maybe you have an infinite number, which then implies an infinite number of copies of everything – of you, of me, of every cat and dog – and every cockroach too.

But what if there’s no Multiverse in space, only a Multiverse in time. That is, a cyclic universe. Sooner or later, one cycle is going to produce #5, #5, #5, #5, #5, #5, etc. right on down the chain. Is ours, are we, that lucky cyclic Universe? Therein lies the rub. Our Universe doesn’t appear, based on current observational evidence, to be heading in a cyclic direction – towards a Big Crunch - now, or ever. So, if we are the last production of a previously endless cyclic process or chain, then we broke it!

So, all ideas explaining a, and in particular our, bio-friendly Universe have their plusses and minuses.

But wait, there’s more! What if our ‘what if’ game isn’t possible? Maybe there’s one, and only one physics possible. Maybe all the dials are super-glued at position #5 and just can’t be moved. I believe it was Einstein who asked whether God had any choice in creating our Universe’s parameters. Maybe not, in which case maybe God isn’t as all powerful as he / she / it / they is/are cracked up to be – but that’s another topic. If all dials are set on position #5, therefore any other laws, constants and relationships of physics are purely in the realm of abstract or hypothetical thought-experiments

There is however one other scenario, actually scenarios, that have a bearing on the issue. The laws and constants of physics have interrelationships, and thus, it might not be possible to alter one dial without affecting the position of other dials. The prime argument is that altering the position of any one dial makes the Universe bio-unfriendly. However, I wonder whether altering more than one dial might restore a bio-friendly Universe. Translated, we probably move into the life-not-as-we-know-it area, which traditionally has played around with replacing silicone for carbon; liquid methane or liquid ammonia for liquid water. But altering more than one dial has near limitless possibilities way above and beyond traditional life-not-as-we-know-it scenarios. Maybe changing dial one from #5 to number #4 makes a universe bio-unfriendly, but if dial seven is then changed to position #9 and dial number three is altered to position #2, then maybe a non-carbon based life-form might be possible. The possibilities, again, are near endless, although in general nearly all combinations of dials produce lifeless universes, maybe, just maybe, some combination, other that all #5’s, might also do the bio-friendly trick. I don’t know, but can it be ruled out of the question based on current understandings?

So why is the Universe bio-friendly? I’m not sure, but I strongly suspect that the ultimate key concept here is that of a Multiverse. But be it design or random probability, is it any different than asking why the Universe is chemistry-friendly, or for that matter even physics-friendly? Accept the fact that our Universe just is, uncomfortable as that might be to some, because if it weren’t, I wouldn’t be here writing this and you wouldn’t be there reading it!

*With apologies to the late Alfred Hitchcock for twisting around his “Dial M for Murder” phrase.

Further readings:

Barrow, John D.; The Constants of Nature: From Alpha to Omega; Vintage Books, London; 2003:

Barrow, John D. & Tipler, Frank J.; The Anthropic Cosmological Principle; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 1986:

Davies, Paul; The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?;

Allen Lane, London

; 2006:  

Morris, Simon Conway; Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans In A Lonely Universe; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2003:

Rees, Martin; Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe; Phoenix, London; 2000:

Susskind, Leonard; The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design; Back Bay Books, New York; 2006: