Wednesday, January 19, 2011

To be fine tuned for life, the universe should have been tuned differently?

At Slashdot “News for Nerds.Stuff that Matters” we learn:
eldavojohn writes
"A common argument one might encounter in intelligent design or the arduous process of resolving science with religion is that the physical constants of our world are fine tuned for life by some creator or designer. A University of Alberta theoretical physicist claims quite the opposite when it comes to the cosmological constant. His paper says that our ever expanding universe has a positive cosmological constant and he explains that the optimum cosmological constant for maximizing the chances of life in the universe would be slightly negative: 'any positive value of the constant would tend to decrease the fraction of matter that forms into galaxies, reducing the amount available for life. Therefore the measured value of the cosmological constant, which is positive, is evidence against the idea that the constants have been fine-tuned for life.'" [Links at site.]
Well, when we find a good many of Stephen Hawking’s other universes, we can see whether any are negatively constanted, and if so, whether they have more life.