We are living in a unique universe, our universe looks finely tuned to have us. Not personally the humans, instead, its circumstances fa...
We are living in a unique universe, our universe looks finely tuned to have us. Not personally the humans, instead, its circumstances favor being what is necessary to have life. This uniqueness gives a big headache to scientists. The circumstances are so special that our chance for existence is practically negligible.
Why our universe is such as it is? No one knows. Is it tuned directly to have us? By someone? To think about somebody would not be a scientific approach until science could understand and explain that someone. The religious explanation excludes science according to the definition of God. Science tries to understand and explain. Scientifically, the universe is finely tuned to have us because...
...because of the blind chance. This explanation is scientific. It does not require non-natural prerequisites, only the opportunity needs to exist, and it exists as we can see it to work in nature. Our deepest level of existence is built on random fluctuations - as quantum physics states. The whole universe may be started as a random fluctuation, and random fluctuations selected the physical parameters as well. And it was just right for us. We are living in one of the infinite possibilities. It is just a nuance that we can live in one of an endless line of universes or in a universe of the infinite sized multiverse.
We have to be proud. Our infinitely small chance to have a fine-tuned universe for life happened. Enjoy.
This unlikeliness in the endless choices - even if we must accept it as we undoubtedly exist - still disturbing. Maybe the question that we ask is the wrong one. The question, which is: how could a universe exist which is so finely tuned to accommodate life. Maybe our approach to this question is faulty, overly self-centric. It is true that the physical parameters of our universe favor having life in it, having our chemistry-based life. If the physical parameters of our universe would be a little different, the chemistry-based life could not be possible.
What physical circumstances are necessary for life to develop? What kind of universe does life require? Not easy to define what is life, but there are some minimal requirements what undoubtedly necessary to give a chance for life to exist. What are these?
It is necessary that the universe capable of creating complex structures. Not difficult to imagine a universe where complex structures are not possible. Actually, our universe fine-tune-ness partially is about to be able to create complexity. For example, our universe is capable of creating many different atoms because of this fine-tune-ness. Otherwise, our universe would be just too simple to have a chemistry-based life.
Another necessary requirement is that the universe must have places, where the bounding energy of the complex systems is close to the background energy of the environment. This requirement is necessary for the complex structures to be able to change, restructure. Our universe now has these places. Not everywhere, they are pretty rare, but these places exist. Like in our Earth. This requirement is not self-evidently met either. Even our universe was in the stage where the background energy was on the level where existing complex structures could not change, and new complex structures could not be formed. Later our universe probably will be in that kind of phase again.
The last minimal requirement is the sufficient time to have for the universe to spend in the state where the priorly mentioned conditions exist. How long is the sufficient time is different, depending on the circumstances, the actual physical parameters, the speed of how the structures change. Our universe became capable of creating chemistry-based life maybe a few hundred million years after the big bang and stays in this life-capable stage for many hundred billion years. But that is the human universe. In other physical configurations, a life cycle can be nanoseconds or a million years. Time is relative to life.
Life is a chance. The mentioned requirements are not a guarantee for life to exist but give an opportunity to the life to let be. Our universe bears the conditions to have life, but our universe needed a fine-tuning - even if it is based on random effects - to be capable of having a life. Our universe is specific. Look like it is, isn't it?
If it is, then we are the chosen one, the one in the infinite possibilities. However, we just specified what are the minimal requirements for a universe to bear life. Our universe fulfills these specifications, match these requirements. Only our universe could match these requirements? Surely not. Many universes - if the multiverse exists - would have physical parameters, where the three mentioned requirements can match. Those universes would be entirely different from ours, they have different physical parameters than ours have. Maybe we could not even recognize the lives in them. We would not have a chance to recognize it anyway; those are in different universes. However, if these universes match the minimal required parameters, they would be capable of bearing life. And probably where life is possible, sooner or later, it appears.
So is our universe the chosen one? Is it the anthropic universe that favors life? We should rather say, our universe has a this-universe conform life. Not our universe is specific; rather our universe is one of the possible many, where the minimum conditions are met. The life is so general it can exist in different configurations, in different universes. Like in ours.
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