Fundies often point out that the universe is oh so snugly created just for us, that if a constant here or there was out by as much as a gazillionth of a percent that the universe would not support life.
needless to say, they never back their argument with anything remotely resembling evidence.
The following is an excerpt from the 2nd Aug 08 New Scientist, relating work by a Fred Adams, soon to be published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
"The idea that certain aspects of our universe make it uniquely suited to life has never been properly tested...Claims of fine tuning have generally been based on what happens when you vary a single characteristic...that, says Adams, is too artificial a scenario...The right way to do the problem is to start from scratch...'turn all the knobs, and find out what happens'...
To do this, Adams started with a simple definition of a star: a massive body held together by its own gravity that is stable, long-lived and generates energy through nuclear processes. Just three constants are involved in the formation of such stars One is the gravitational constant. The second is alpha, the fine structure constant that determines the strength of the interactions between radiation and matter. The third is a composite of constants that determines the reaction rates of nuclear processes.
Adams selected a range of possible values for each of these constants, then put them into a computer model that created a multitude of universes, or a virtual multiverse....
About a quarter of the resulting universes turned out to be populated by energy generating stars. 'You can change alpha or the gravitational constant by a factor of 100 and stars still form'"
needless to say, they never back their argument with anything remotely resembling evidence.
The following is an excerpt from the 2nd Aug 08 New Scientist, relating work by a Fred Adams, soon to be published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
"The idea that certain aspects of our universe make it uniquely suited to life has never been properly tested...Claims of fine tuning have generally been based on what happens when you vary a single characteristic...that, says Adams, is too artificial a scenario...The right way to do the problem is to start from scratch...'turn all the knobs, and find out what happens'...
To do this, Adams started with a simple definition of a star: a massive body held together by its own gravity that is stable, long-lived and generates energy through nuclear processes. Just three constants are involved in the formation of such stars One is the gravitational constant. The second is alpha, the fine structure constant that determines the strength of the interactions between radiation and matter. The third is a composite of constants that determines the reaction rates of nuclear processes.
Adams selected a range of possible values for each of these constants, then put them into a computer model that created a multitude of universes, or a virtual multiverse....
About a quarter of the resulting universes turned out to be populated by energy generating stars. 'You can change alpha or the gravitational constant by a factor of 100 and stars still form'"
