Christian cosmologist says universe not fine-tuned for life: A response

Here's Rob Sheldon again, on the recent paper by Christian cosmologist Don Page on why our universe is not fine-tuned for life:

a) "fine-tuning" is in the eye of the beholder. All Page demonstrates is that his eye is different than yours. Hence the only real question is whether "fine-tuning" exists at all, not what its magnitude is. If it does exist, no matter what its size, then the universe is "special", "indeterminate", and "not necessarily so". So "fine-tuning" is a scientist's placeholder for a philosopher's contingency.

b) "Optimality" is in the mind of the beholder, depending on what the beholder knows. The "optimum" shape for a human is a sphere, if we are trying to achieve 98.6F on a planet that averages 40F. Obviously, we've left a lot out of our calculations, and equally obviously, we will never know if we left out some crucial factor. Thus we never know if our "optimum" solution is global (contains all relevant factors) or local (misses some). Drawing global (e.g., theological) conclusions from some local guess is sheer hubris, and should be laughed to derision.

c) Lambda =10^-122 Planck units means that the observations are only about 122 orders of magnitude off from what theoretical physics would estimate for this number (the Planck units.)

Let that soak in for a moment. Dembski's universal probability bound is 150 orders of magnitude, only slightly greater than this number. The 10^122 ratio of theory/observed has been called the biggest unsolved problem in physics.

It is also orders of magnitude smaller than typical error bars on other physical constants. So distinguishing it from 0.0 is more an article of faith than of science. Therefore making conclusions about revelation (what God did as observed by science) using theology (how God should work as assumed from theory) may be a fine thing for seminarians, but makes lousy science.

I'm on a hobby horse here, but putting assumptions in our method that turn out to determine our conclusions is a no-no that should invalidate a science paper. One of the many ways that peer-review has failed, is that logical nonsense doesn't get flagged any more. Science should be inductive, not deductive, and when our conclusions are contained in our assumptions, we're being deductive.

For Page to conclude that lambda =/= 0, he had to assume a model with Lambda in it to start with. Einstein inserted Lambda to get a steady state universe, and removed it when Lemaitre's expanding universe was shown to be a simpler solution. It has been reinserted to (a) explain a small anomaly with Type Ia supernovae intensities and (b) solve a "flatness" contingency problem. So if we invented it to solve the metaphysical contingency problem [and I purposely discount (a)], we cannot therefore claim that its observed existence solves the contingency problem.

d) The baryon density, which is the middle term of this deductive syllogism that goes from cosmological constant to contingency, is itself another controversial subject. The cosmological constant is all about dark energy, baryon density is all about dark matter, while "fine tuning" is all about contingent creation. Page has managed to combine the three most controversial subjects in cosmology into a logical syllogism and claim some sort of deductive power. This ought to be scientifically humorous.

The more uncertainty we add into model, the more certain our specific model must be wrong (the ratio of actual solutions/possible solutions --> 0). The fact that global warming models do not include clouds, cosmic rays, precipitation, past climate or repeatability does not mean that climate change is inevitable and deniers are being dogmatic. So also the fact that dark energy assumptions change dark matter assumptions which affect contingency assumptions should tell us our conclusions are woefully uncertain and most probably wrong.

Philosopher responds to Hawking's "philosophy is dead" claim"

Here (John Haldane, "Philosophy Lives", First Things, January 2011)

What is meant by talking about many universes? It might mean unobservable regions of the universe—the one spatio-temporal-causal continuum—or, although this is much harder to make sense of, entirely distinct cosmic setups, wholly discontinuous with the universe we inhabit. The first possibility fails to serve Hawking and Mlodinow’s purpose. Any evidence we could have for these distant regions would necessarily be evidence for situations exhibiting the same orderliness whose existence seemed to call for explanation.

The second possibility—that there are many universes, entirely distinct realities, wholly discontinuous and sharing no common elements—fails also. There can be no empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis, nor could it be derived as a necessary condition of the possible existence and character of the only universe of which we have or could have scientific knowledge.

Hawking and Mlodinow write that the “multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning.” Whether or not it was invented as such, its deployment in this context appears ad hoc, introduced only to avoid the conclusion that the general regularities and particular fine-tuning are due to the agency of a creator.

The basic components of the material universe and the forces operating on them exhibit properties of stability and regularity that invite explanation—the more so given the narrow band within which they have to lie in order for there to be intelligent animals able to investigate and reflect on the conditions of their own existence. Science cannot provide an ultimate explanation of order.

As Hawking and Mlodinow occasionally seem to recognize, far from philosophy being dead, having been killed by science, the deepest arguments in this area are not scientific but philosophical. And if the philosophical reasoning runs in the direction I have suggested, it is not only philosophy but also natural theology that is alive and ready to bury its latest would-be undertakers.

Hawking and Mlodinow: Firing God and hiring the multiverse

British physicist David Tyler comments:

Stephen Hawking has achieved the status of 'celebrity scientist'. He writes books that sell well and has both presented and performed in television series.

His latest book, The Grand Design, co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow, has been reviewed widely by both popular press and scientific journals. According to Michael Turner, who wrote the Nature review, these authors:

"offer a brief but thrilling account of some of the boldest ideas in physics - including M-theory and the multiverse - and what these have to say about our existence and the nature of the Universe."

The media appeared to be stimulated primarily by the claim that physics has made God redundant. "God is unnecessary, science can explain the universe without the need for a creator" (BBC News), "Why God Did Not Create the Universe. There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world - no gods required." (Wall Street Journal). The Guardian responded by conducting a poll among its readers, asking the question:

"Is physicist Stephen Hawking right that physics, not God, created the universe?" This theme is also picked out in the Nature review: "No miracle in the Multiverse". Some might find the argument to be artificially polarised - for did not the pioneers of science link the existence of laws of nature with the reality of a supreme Lawgiver? More recent research has unearthed evidence for the "fine-tuning" of the Cosmos, so the evidences of design have become more prominent with time. Hawking and Mlodinow recognise this when they write:

"Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not "arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature." Instead, he maintained that the order in the universe was "created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition." The discovery recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that this grand design is the work of some grand Designer."

This brings us to the heart of the argument presented by Hawking and Mlodinow: they are endorsing M-theory and the Multiverse cosmological model. This is how Turner puts it:

"In searching for the holy grail, Hawking and others pinned their hopes first on super-gravity and then on string theory. Both are now seen as different regimes of a grander mathematical framework called M-theory, where M is yet to be determined - is it master, miracle or mirage? M-theory unifies gravity with the other fundamental forces (weak and strong nuclear and electromagnetism), predicts seven additional dimensions of space and suggests that space and time might be emergent phenomena rather than fundamental. It is exciting and important, but much of it remains to be explored."

For more, go here.

Multiverse: Recent studies suggest that some alternative universes "may not be so inhospitable" - assuming they exist

In "Looking for Life in the Multiverse: Universes with different physical laws might still be habitable" Scientific American Magazine (December 16, 2009) By Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez make clear what is and is not accepted in science (as they understand it) and why:

The laws of physics-and in particular the constants of nature that enter into those laws, such as the strengths of the fundamental forces-might therefore seem finely tuned to make our existence possible. Short of invoking a supernatural explanation, which would be by definition outside the scope of science, a number of physicists and cosmologists began in the1970s to try solving the puzzle by hypothesizing that our universe is just one of many existing universes, each with its own laws. According to this"anthropic" reasoning, we might just occupy the rare universe where the right conditions happen to have come together to make life possible. Amazingly, the prevailing theory in modern cosmology, which emerged in the1980s, suggests that such "parallel universes" may really exist-in fact, that a multitude of universes would incessantly pop out of a primordial vacuum the way ours did in the big bang. Our universe would be but one of many pocket universes within a wider expanse called the multiverse. In the overwhelming majority of those universes, the laws of physics might not allow the formation of matter as we know it or of galaxies, stars, planets and life. But given the sheer number of possibilities, nature would have had a good chance to get the "right" set of laws at least once. Our recent studies, however, suggest that some of these other universes-assuming they exist-may not be so inhospitable after all. Remarkably, we have found examples of alternative values of the fundamental constants, and thus of alternative sets of physical laws, that might still lead to very interesting worlds and perhaps to life. The basic idea is to change one aspect of the laws of nature and then make compensatory changes to other aspects.

Our work did not address the most serious fine-tuning problem in theoretical physics: the smallness of the "cosmological constant," thanks to which our universe neither recollapsed into nothingness a fraction of a second after the big bang, nor was ripped part by an exponentially accelerating expansion. Nevertheless, the examples of alternative, potentially habitable universes raise interesting questions and motivate further research into how unique our own universe might be.

Well, the supernatural may be "outside the scope of science," but universes whose existence is not demonstrated, which are imagined principally to get out of a jam with the evidence from this universe, are reasonably doubted, despite thought experiments. The tentative tone here is well justified. It should be used more often.

See other multiverse and fine tuning stories:

Multiverse:

Cosmology: If you needn't worry about paying the rent Friday, you can worry about this stuff

Cosmology: Science's leader in things that don't make sense

Cosmology: Crisis of the month: gravitation

Cosmology: Multiverse - getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique.

Cosmology: I seem to have yanked particle physicist Lawrence Krauss's chain

Cosmology: Wow. It takes guts to wage warwith Stephen Hawking. He appeared in Star Trek

Cosmology: Arguments against flatness (plus exposing sloppy science writing)

Cosmology: If the universe has free will, where do I go to file a claim for damages?

Fine tuning:

New podcasts on fine tuning of the universe

Also: Gravity doesn't make sense? Hold on to that thought!

Multiverse: Getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique?

Can the laws of physics evolve?

Like clouds in our coffee, all these other universes

Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision

The Big Bang exploded; seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? It depends.

Will the cosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design?

Now, remind me again why we need multiverse theory in the first place?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the big fix with the sure thing?

New podcasts on fine tuning of the universe

Two interesting ones here, from the Discovery Institute:

Cosmological Fine Tuning and the Multiverse Model

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Dr. Scott Chambers, who discusses his current research and his interest in the debate over evolution, which began in college and continues through this day.

Dr. Chambers explains how the evidence for intelligent design from the fine-tuning of the universe and the fundamental constants of physics "smacks of design," and he addresses the multiverse hypothesis.

Click here to listen.

Also, Is the earth uniquely situated for scientific observation? Do we live on a privileged planet?

On this episode of ID The Future we have a short clip about the book The Privileged Planet. In the book, authors Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez suggest that earth was designed for scientific discovery. They introduce a new idea that more than just being rare in the universe, the earth is ideally located for scientific observation.

Go here to listen.

Here are some other stories on the controversy over whether the universe is fine tuned or whether there are many universes:

Gravity doesn't make sense? Hold on to that thought!

Multiverse: Getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique?

Can the laws of physics evolve?

Like clouds in our coffee, all these other universes

Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision

The Big Bang exploded; seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? It depends.

Will the cosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design?

Now, remind me again why we need multiverse theory in the first place?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the big fix with the sure thing?

(Note: If you follow me at Twitter, you will get regular notice of new Colliding Universes posts, usually when I have posted five or so stories.)

Gravity doesn't make sense? ... hold that thought!

At New Scientist, Michael Brooks tells us "Seven Things That Don't Make Sense About Gravity," including

- If gravity were a tiny bit stronger, the universe as we know it would not exist

- From plants to quail, life of all stripes seems to need gravity to work properly

Uh ... so then gravity doesn't make sense because ... why, exactly? Because there wasn't supposed to be a solution to those problems? Why not?

It reminds me a bit of this earlier kvetching about gravity.

Fine tuning is a big problem for these people.

Multiverse: Getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique?

In "How to map the multiverse" (04 May 2009), Anil Ananthaswamy explains:

Greene's transformation is emblematic of a profound change among the majority of physicists. Until recently, many were reluctant to accept this idea of the "multiverse", or were even belligerent towards it. However, recent progress in both cosmology and string theory is bringing about a major shift in thinking. Gone is the grudging acceptance or outright loathing of the multiverse. Instead, physicists are starting to look at ways of working with it, and maybe even trying to prove its existence.

If such ventures succeed, our universe will go the way of Earth - from seeming to be the centre of everything to being exposed as just a backwater in a far vaster cosmos. And just as we are unable to deduce certain aspects of Earth from first principles - such as its radius or distance from the sun - we will have to accept that some things about our universe are a random accident, inexplicable except in the context of the multiverse.

Also

However, if our universe is part of a multiverse then we can ascribe the value of the cosmological constant to an accident. The same goes for other aspects of our universe, such as the mass of the electron. The idea is simply that each universe's laws of physics and fundamental constants are randomly determined, and we just happen to live in one where these are suited for life. "If not for the multiverse, you would have these unsolved problems at every corner," says Linde.

Let's see. We don't need to prove fine tuning. It's just there. But there's no evidence for the multiverse; it is an attractive idea because it makes our current cosmological values and fine tuning appear random. I love this line: " ... starting to look at ways of working with it, and maybe even trying to prove its existence".

Question: How fit are people in this state of mind to evaluate what they are seeing?

Can the laws of physics evolve?

A friend writes to say that in "The unique universe" (PhysicsWorld.com, 2 June 2009), Toronto-based cosmologist Lee Smolin attempts to develop a different view of time that allows him the laws of physics tp evolve in time. My friend wonders, "Presumably this is an alternative way of addressing the design challenge of fine tuning?"

Here's the essay's At a Glance:

Against the timeless multiverse

- Many cosmologists today believe that we live in a timeless multiverse - a universe where ours is just one of an ensemble of universes, and where time does not exist

- The timeless multiverse, however, presents a lot of problems. Our laws of physics are no longer determinable from experiment and it is unclear what the connection is between fundamental and effective laws

- Furthermore, theories that do not posit time to be a fundamental property fail to reproduce the space-time that we are familiar with

- Many of these puzzles can be avoided if we adopt a different set of principles that postulates that there is only one universe and that time is a fundamental property of nature. This scenario also opens the way to the possibility that the laws of physics evolve in time.

Well, some people go to a lot of trouble to evade the implications of fine tuning of the universe (= design).

Here is what I wrote about Lee Smolin's work in By Design or by Chance?:

New Universes Sprout Only in Black Holes?

Cosmologist Lee Smolin is a bit more conservative than Tegmark. He speculates that new universes might erupt—but not just anywhere that a particle goes one way rather than the other. Perhaps only in the middles of cosmic black holes. The new universes are disconnected from our universe, because the laws of physics break down in black holes. That is why we don’t know about them.

Smolin believes that the eruption of new universes in black holes follows the principles of Darwinism (natural selection). He explains:

"It seemed to me that the only principle powerful enough to explain the high degree of organization of our universe—compared to a universe with the particles and forces chosen randomly—was natural selection itself. The question then became: Could there be any mechanism by which natural selection could work on the scale of the whole universe?"

In other words, natural selection (the outcome of law acting on chance), lurking in a black hole, organizes a complex universe, excruciatingly fine-tuned for life. Smolin does not claim that the black hole spouts millions of them. Alternatively, he is attracted to the idea that the universe organizes itself:

"I believe more in the general idea that there must be mechanisms of self-organization involved in the selection of the parameters of the laws of nature than I do in this particular mechanism, which is only the first one I was able to invent. "

All these universes popping up in the clouds in our coffee, in the torment of a black hole, in the futility of an escaped balloon—their existence guarantees that our universe is a product of chance. If only they would exist . . . if only they would exist . . . (pp. 34-35)

Here are some more fine tuning stories:

Astronomer vs. pop science TV

Materialism strikes back: We create the universe, not God

The universe has hallmarks of desgn: And what can anyone do about it?

Like clouds in our coffee, all these other universes

Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision

The Big Bang exploded; seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? It depends.

Will the cosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design?

Now, remind me again why we need multiverse theory in the first place?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the big fix with the sure thing?

Fine tuning

I haven't been able to post recently, due to the demands of a recent freelance job, but my friend Wintery Knight advises me that this and this are useful defenses of the fine tuning of our universe. Personally, I haven't the least doubt that our universe is fine tuned, and I am hardly interested in hearing about a zillion imaginary flopped universes as an alternative explanation.

Many years ago, a missionary doctor told me that most Africans - in the nation he was proud to serve - had little use for communists or communism because the communists said there is no God - so we can do whatever we want.

The Africans generally said, "Everyone knows there is a God. Every reasonable person can see that. The world we live in shows it clearly. What people want to know is how to get in touch with him, and get help for our problems."

I think the Africans had the better of that argument.

Astronomer vs. pop science TV

Here's my review of Hugh Ross's Why the Universe Is the Way It Is (Baker, 2008). It was originally written for a Christian news magazine but, due to a mixup, someone else had published a review first. So I thought I may as well put it up here. Also, below the review, I have placed some selections from the book in earlier posts put up here:

Canadian-born astronomer Hugh Ross reminds us that Stephen Hawking said, in his all time science bestseller A Brief History of Time: “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”

But Hawking, along with a great many other cosmologists, then devoted his career to attempting to explain it all away. The resulting efforts—including speculations about hypothetical other universes—are widely reported, not because they are very convincing but because their anti-theistic assumptions are part and parcel of the current understanding of science.

Ross begs to differ. His book consists of two parts: Why does the universe show the puzzling features that it does, and how can we integrate a Biblical explanation with a scientific one? He recounts that he became a Christian as a young adult after a skeptical study of the Bible (and other “holy books”) convinced him that “no human mind or collection of minds alone could have produced the sixty-six books of the Bible. These books contained information their writers couldn’t have known and concepts they couldn’t have begun to imagine apart from supernatural inspiration.” Now this is a daring claim, one I will leave to scholars. At any rate, the experience started him on the path to founding Reasons to Believe, a Pasadena, California-based ministry aimed at scientists, based largely on insights from astronomy, physics, and more recently, biology.

Ross patiently explains why the universe is so big and so old—because life as we know it could not otherwise exist. Of course, a skeptic might reply that God could have ordained things differently. But the skeptic is never asked to explain how, exactly; skepticism is apparently a full time job. Curiously, Earth is also in the darkest location in the galaxy and therefore the best for observing the heavens). Ross joins many theistic astronomers in taking this as a sign that humans were meant to explore the universe.

So far so good. But then, in the latter half of the book, Ross turns to the Scriptures and I become uneasy. Let me begin by positioning myself as far as possible from one popular brand of “theistic evolution,” according to which evidence for God in nature is suspect “because one day science might find a reason for all that, and then what will become of your faith?”

Let me be clear: Science has found a reason for fine tuning: It is necessary for life. Further delving into the universe is likely to uncover still more such evidence. Fine tuning is also precisely what the Scriptures tell us to expect when they constantly praise God’s “handiwork.” The only alternatives are to say that human reason is meaningless or that there might be a zillion flopped universes out there (and many pundits do say these things). But these alternatives do not recommend themselves easily to a reasoning mind.

My uneasiness stems from the fact that Ross, taking a literalist approach to Scripture, tries to understand subjects like the New Jerusalem in terms of physics. It’s interesting, yes, but alarmingly trite. I think that Paul’s approach— "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9 NIV)—is wiser in the long run. Paul and other Christian mystics usually cannot describe authentic visions of the world to come, as I learned while working on The Spiritual Brain. (See especially 2 Cor 12:2-4, where Paul makes that explicit.)

It’s not a question of preferring faith to science. We simply cannot speak intelligibly of the world to come, even if we are sure that it exists, for the same reasons that we cannot speak intelligibly of an eleven-dimensional structure, even if we are sure that it exists. We do not have language for it.

Those cautions aside, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is is a must-read for intelligent Christians and an excellent antidote to the “lost in the universe” nonsense that dominates pop science TV.

Some selections of interest from the book:

Why some self-proclaimed skeptics need a universal swivel joint in their necks ...

The nothingness of nothing as seen by scientists

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe or just an ordinary one?

Extraterrestrials: Several million UFO reports later, the state of the question

Materialism strikes back: We create the universe, not God?

In "Why it isn't as simple as God vs. the multiverse", Amanda Gefter (December 4, 2008) who seems determined to turn Britain's New Scientist into the "National Enquirer" of pop science mags, advises that

Pitting the multiverse against religion presents a false dichotomy. Science never boils down to a choice between two alternative explanations. It is always plausible that both are wrong and a third or fourth or fifth will turn out to be correct.

What might a third option look like here? Physicist John Wheeler once offered a suggestion: maybe we should approach cosmic fine-tuning not as a problem but as a clue. Perhaps it is evidence that we somehow endow the universe with certain features by the mere act of observation. It's an idea that Stephen Hawking has been thinking about, too. Hawking advocates what he calls top-down cosmology, in which observers are creating the universe and its entire history right now. If we in some sense create the universe, it is not surprising that the universe is well suited to us.

Well, that's a pretty remarkable idea: We create the universe?

Okay. Let's take a deep breath and think about what this means:

1. The mind is real, and it causes things to happen? So, let me get this straight: The mind is not an illusion created by the buzz of neurons in the brain. Not only is the mind not an illusion, but it actually creates the universe. Wowza! Has anyone told the folk at The Edge this?

Or more to the point, has anyone told their literary agents? Is there some way of getting back huge advances offered for hard line materialist works? Naw, I thought not.

2. The obvious reason that we do not, in isolation, create the universe is this: Many of our fellow humans would not intentionally create the circumstances they endure. As co-author of The Spiritual Brain, I would be the last person to deny the causal powers of the human mind. But clearly, other factors are in play with respect to how the universe works out.

It is becoming harder and harder to deny design in the universe.

The universe has the hallmarks of design: And what can anyone do about it?

From British physicist David Tyler:

Ever since the 'anthropic principle' entered the language of science, the case for the universe having the hallmarks of design has become progressively stronger. There is a consensus in the thinking of physicists and cosmologists that far exceeds the alleged consensus about anthropogenic global warming, and also the alleged consensus that natural selection is the mechanism for explaining design in living things. Author Tim Folger elevates the principle to "an extraordinary fact" about the universe: "Its basic properties are uncannily suited for life. Tweak the laws of physics in just about any way and - in this universe, anyway - life as we know it would not exist."

Folger's article is based on an interview with physicist Andrei Linde, who says: "We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible." Many of these are sketched out for the benefit of readers, and Folger comments: "There are many such examples of the universe's life-friendly properties - so many, in fact, that physicists can't dismiss them all as mere accidents."

If we apply Dembski's design filter approach, we have three avenues to explore: Law, Chance and Design. Law gets very little attention from Folger, despite the intense search for grand Unification Theories (GUT) or Theories of Everything (ToE). The reason is that GUT have not delivered. We cannot explain why the universe is like it is. No progress has been made in showing why the fine-tuning of fundamental constants should be a feature of the physical world. Indeed, the pendulum has swung away from GUT because of the interest in string theory - which has served to underline how extraordinary the evidences of fine-tuning actually are. "[Polchinski and Bousso]calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as [10 to the power 1000]. Each solution represents a unique way to describe the universe."

Go here for more.

See also:

Like clouds in our coffee, all these other universes

See also: Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision.

The Big Bang exploded; seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? It depends.

Will the cosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design?

Now, remind me again why we need multiverse theory in the first place?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the big fix with the sure thing?

More fine tuning stories here

New podcasts on fine tuning of the universe

Also: Gravity doesn't make sense? Hold on to that thought!

Multiverse: Getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique?

Can the laws of physics evolve?

Like clouds in our coffee, all these other universes

Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision

The Big Bang exploded; seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? It depends.

Will the cosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design?

Now, remind me again why we need multiverse theory in the first place?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the big fix with the sure thing?

Like clouds in our coffee ... all these other universes ...

In Darwinian Universes And Colliding Branes: Eschewing A Cosmic Singularity, Access Research Network correspondent Robert Deyes comments on cosmologist Lee Smolin's "Darwinian universe" theory:

Cosmologist Lee Smolin has developed his own Multiverse theory conjecturing that within the confines of black holes, there might be other universes forming and expanding just like our own that would never be visible to us because of the limited horizon of black holes (their gravitational pull is so strong that even visible light cannot escape) (Ref 4). Smolin's ideas would certainly make good science fiction. Universes that originate from explosions that are hidden from sight in black holes make a backdrop for a great story in which intelligent beings such as us are oblivious to the origin of their cosmos, believing it to be in some way unique (Ref 4, p.89). With so many universes spawning from black holes, Smolin argues, it becomes more probable that at least one of them will have laws of physics that are fine-tuned for the formation of stars, planetary systems and eventually life. Or does it?

Smolin's idea of universe progeny spawning from black holes within parent universes bears striking similarities to the evolutionary tree of common descent that Darwin provided as the sole picture in 'The Origin Of Species'. According to Smolin, as universes 'improve' their ability to generate more stars and thereby produce more black holes, 'fitter' universes will swamp out those that are less finely tuned, have fewer stars and therefore produce less progeny (Ref 4, p.90-100). Given time, enough universes will have produced enough stars to generate enough black holes to produce more progeny universes with life-supporting, physical parameters such as our own.

But what is to say that fine-tuning will necessarily improve to the phenomenal level that we find in the laws of physics that under gird our own cosmos? Smolin's theory relies on the early parent universe going through expansion-collapse cycles before it becomes 'fit' enough to produce stars and consequently black holes for its progeny to form (Ref 4, p.97). For such a cosmos, the mechanical energy needed for expansion-collapse would eventually decay just as a ball bouncing on a living room floor would eventually stop bouncing. Such observations are consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. So for Smolin's parent universes to generate progeny, they would have to get fit before the bouncing energy ran out.

Oddly enough Smolin's theory also suffers from a lack of testability and falsifiability. We have no way of testing whether or not a host of universes and other worlds actually exist behind black holes.

About all that, I said, in By Design or by Chance?:

All these universes popping up in the clouds in our coffee, in the torment of a black hole, in the futility of an escaped balloon—their existence guarantees that our universe is a product of chance. If only they would exist . . . if only they would exist . . .

See also: Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision.

The Big Bang exploded; seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? It depends.

Will thecosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design?

Now, remind me again why we need multiverse theory in the first place?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the big fix with the sure thing?

Will it be a disaster for physics if the Higgs boson is the ONLY thing the Large Hadron Collider finds?

Physicist Stephen Barr, author of Student's Guide to Natural Science, thinks so. At First Things's On the Square, he writes,

Some people say that the LHC will discover something called the Higgs particle. It almost surely will, but if that is all it discovers, it will be a huge disappointment and in fact a disaster for physics. It is (almost) certain that the Higgs particle is there. That in itself is no big deal.

But here's the big deal:

What people really are hoping to see at the LHC is evidence of these new kinds of matter predicted by supersymmetry. Until recently, most theorists probably thought that the chances were much greater than 50 percent that the supersymmetry solution of the Higgs problem is correct, and that evidence for it would be seen at the LHC. Some doubts are creeping in, however.

First of all, theories based on the supersymmetry idea are not without serious difficulties. But what has made the doubts increase in many physicist’s minds recently (including many top physicists) is the possibility that the Higgs puzzle may be explained anthropically rather than by supersymmetry. If we live in a multiverse, it is possible that, in different places in the multiverse, the Higgs field has different strengths. In most places it might have its natural strength. But in rare places it may happen to have the much smaller value that it has where we are. And—it can be argued convincingly—only in those rare places can there be life. We see a strangely small value of the Higgs field, because we are living in a highly atypical part of the multiverse, namely a part where the Higgs field has a value that allows life to exist.

By "multiverse", I gather that Barr does not mean "many universes" but rather that in our universe, conditions may be very different in one region than in another.

Most scientists have assumed that the universe is much the same everywhere, but that is an assumption, not a finding.

If indeed, the conditions in our region might be specialized to allow life, I suppose that would be another instance of fine tuning of the universe for life.

See also: From the "missing the point" diaries: Anthropic topic? Or anthropic flopic?

Podcast: The argument for design in cosmology

Here

[Discovery Institute] CSC Research Director Bruce Gordon speaks with Casey Luskin about the evidence for cosmic fine-tuning. With this technical discussion, Dr. Gordon explains some of theoretical and mathematical problems with attempts to dodge the evidence for cosmic fine-tuning such as the “multiverse” hypothesis and string theory. Dr. Gordon explains that, in the end, these objections to cosmic design amount to thinly veiled materialist philosophy that are rife with logical contradictions and a fundamental in ability to explain why something, rather than “absolute nothing,” exists.

For “absolute nothing” go here.

See also:

“Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe, or just an ordinary one?”

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine tuned as a science lab"

Physics: No escape from philosophy through equations?

From a recent Nature editorial "Cool philosophies: High-energy physicists should not gloss over fundamental conundrums" (4 September 2008):

When physicists, struggling to put across a difficult concept to a lay audience, say (or more probably just think): "Oh, if only I could show you the equations, you would understand," this is not what they really mean. Rather, they mean: "You would understand at the same level as I understand." That is, at the level of mathematical formalism. This is not to imply that physicists hide blindly behind the maths (although some probably do), but that they might not acknowledge or even recognize that the mathematics shields them from genuine conceptual questions.

There is a tendency to wave these questions away as semantic or philosophical, as though such issues by definition cannot be serious. The founders of quantum theory knew otherwise, although some of their dilemmas have still not been resolved. As the philosopher Moritz Schlick said: "It is the mark of the greatest scientific minds that they think out every question they take up right to the end, and the end of every question lies in philosophy."

Which raises some interesting questions, sparked by the comment quoted in an earlier post:

It is almost as if our universe were fine-tuned to start out far from equilibrium so it could possess an arrow of time. But to a physicist, invoking fine-tuning is akin to saying “a miracle occurred.” For Carroll, the challenge was finding a process that would explain the universe’s low entropy naturally, without any appeal to incredible coincidence or (worse) to a miracle.

Is the goal to take the question "right up to the end" as per the Nature editorial or is it to develop a solution that does not involve incredible coincidence, miracle, or fine-tuning?

If the latter, then an inelegant solution, constantly in conflict with evidence, must be preferred to an elegant one that involves any of these elements. That is not only a philosophical question, it is a value choice.

Perhaps sensing something of the kind, the Nature editors go on to suggest that symmetry may not be such an important principle in physics after all:

At the pragmatic level, symmetry has been an immensely fertile tool, and it underpins the notion of a Higgs mechanism for mass. But there is no rigorous justification for relying on it, and it is possible that the LHC might point the way to a new physics that discards it as a ruling principle.

Is the point is that the Large Hadron Collider might not find evidence for the Higgs boson (the God particle), in which case, they may well say, with Peter Higgs,

I no longer understand what I think I understand.

Not to worry, Dr. Higgs. In the Introduction to The Spiritual Brain, Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I said, about neuroscience, "This is a time for exploration, not dogma." You could dust it off for physics too.

See also:

"Why should the search for Darwin's "warm little puddle" be publicly funded?" (= Is it a faith-based quest to find a solution that isn't there?)"

"And what if the Large Hadron Collider doesn't find the God particle (= the Higgs boson)?"

More demolition teams trying to blow up the Big Bang

Recently, I was looking at non-Big Bang theories, and here Discover Magazine (March 25, 2008) offers three of them, including cyclic universe, the multiverse, and the non-existence of time.

This gives you a sense of it:

It is almost as if our universe were fine-tuned to start out far from equilibrium so it could possess an arrow of time. But to a physicist, invoking fine-tuning is akin to saying “a miracle occurred.” For Carroll, the challenge was finding a process that would explain the universe’s low entropy naturally, without any appeal to incredible coincidence or (worse) to a miracle.

But, if ony by coincidence,

For each of the alternatives to the Big Bang, it is easier to demonstrate the appeal of the idea than to prove that it is correct. Steinhardt and Turok’s cyclic cosmology can account for critical pieces of evidence usually cited to support the Big Bang, but the experiments that could put it over the top are decades away. Carroll’s model of the multiverse depends on a speculative interpretation of inflationary cosmology, which is itself only loosely verified.

Barbour stands at the farthest extreme. He has no way to test his concept of Platonia. The power of his ideas rests heavily on the beauty of their formulation and on their capacity to unify physics. “What we are working out now is simple and coherent,” Barbour says, “and because of that I believe it is showing us something fundamental.”

The payoff that Barbour offers is not just a mathematical solution but a philosophical one. In place of all the conflicting notions about the Big Bang and what came before, he offers a way out. He proposes letting go of the past—of the whole idea of the past—and living fully, happily, in the Now.

In one model, each round of existence stretches a trillion years. By that reckoning, our universe is still in its infancy.

Oh well, then ... plenty of time for new theories - assuming time really exists (but some theorists say it doesn't, right?).

See also:

"Big Bang exploded? Seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?"

"Hello, God: This is the Big Bang. Okay, look, I done it. What do I do NOW?"

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

At the new Biologic Institute blog, Grove City astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez argues that Earth's unique position as a science lab is related to its fine-tuning for intelligent life. Here's a snippet:

... since the universe is constantly changing, how does its observability change over its history? In short, it offers a relatively brief window of opportunity for doing cosmology, and we happen to find ourselves in that window. In the future, galaxies will be farther apart; Classical Cepheids (an important type of standard candle) will be less common; and the CBR will be fainter as a result of the continuing expansion of the universe. When the universe is a few times its present age, the evidence of the Big Bang will no longer be available for observation. With this realization in mind, Abraham Loeb recently wrote, “The accelerating universe makes the study of cosmology a transient episode… ” [3].

Not only is this the best period in history for doing cosmology, it also seems to be the only period that can sustain living, breathing cosmologists. The early universe was a much more dangerous place, and in the future Sun-like stars and the geologically important radioisotopes will be rarer, both important requirements for intelligent life. So, it seems that the best time for observing is also the best time for observers!

But why should this be so? It isn’t easy to explain this in terms of mere coincidence because, on top of explaining why the universe seems set up for life, we now need to explain why it seems set up for discovery. The simple solution, of course, is the obvious one—that the universe was designed both for intelligent life and for discovery.

Is this idea testable?

I think it is. For instance, if additional examples of the link between life and discovery are found, this will strengthen the thesis, as would additional evidence for known examples. On the other hand, if additional study weakens the examples we have described, or shows them to be wrongly interpreted, then the thesis is weakened.

Read the rest at Biologic Institute. Carl Sagan, wherever you are, check your e-mail.

(Note: The image is from Reasons to Believe.)

This is Gonzalez's book, which expands on the theme:

Other universes: Why the materialist needs an infinite number of them

Geoff Robinson of "Faith, Beer, and other things that interest Geoff blog" is not impressed with multiverse theories. He comments,

I've been thinking two things about multiverses. Irreducible complexity stands in the way of multiverses working with biology even if it explains the physics. Also, part of the transcendental argument for God (TAG) includes the problem of induction. In other words, laws of physics need a law-giver otherwise you have laws hanging in mid-air. Multiverses do not solve this.

I'm not sure about the irreducible complexity part, Geoff. I suppose if there were infinite numbers of universes, some would contain irreducible complexity, and our current set of laws would be one of infinite possibilities. There might be infinite universes just like ours that do not contain life and infinite numbers that do.

In other words, many universes can solve the fine-tuning problem (why is our universe apparently exquisitely fine-tuned for life to come into existence?) only if there is an arbitrarily large number of universes and all but a few of them have flopped.

Millions of fine-tuned universes with different laws from ours would imply a cosmic creator of universes who never fails. A few flopped universes would imply a less-perfect creator who produced a few flops before producing the blockbuster.

So to rule out God, the materialist needs infinite universes, most of which have flopped, and a few of which accidentally succeeded. A tall order, considering that we only know about one universe now.