Sunday, 17 May 2020

astrophysics - Is the universe really "fine-tuned for life"?


I understand what is meant when we say the universe is "fine tuned", but I've seen it claimed it's is fine tuned "for life". Is it?


When I look at known or even speculated life in our universe, I see life clinging to a tiny crumbs separated by vast voids. Our life needs baryonic matter, only 5% of the universe. Its density is $10^{-30} g/cm^3$, but it clumps together leaving vast voids between the clumps. 99% is in stars and black holes and nebula utterly inhospitable to known life.


That leaves the parts "fine tuned for life" to be 0.05% of the universe. The planets, asteroids, and comets seem like just debris separated by voids billions of times larger than the life-sustaining clumps preventing life from spreading.


Even that seems to be used very inefficiently. Life requires the energy of a star, but it's spewed out in all directions. We only receive a tiny fraction of it. Similarly, life requires heavier elements created in supernova, but these are also spewed out in all directions. And it took billions of years to develop a being capable of asking "is the universe fine tuned for life?"


It seems like we live on the crumbs of creation warmed by a rounding error of the heat from our star. Taking this view, the universe appears extremely inhospitable to life. It could be a lot better tuned.


Is it that the universe is fine-tuned for life? Or is it that the universe is so large and life requires such an infinitesimal fraction of the universe that it's a near guarantee were we to roll the dice again that some crumb, maybe not even baryonic matter, could develop something complex enough to ask "why is the universe fine tuned for life"? Am I just restating the weak anthropic principle?


I understand this is straying into philosophy. If that's off topic, are my physical assumptions correct?





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