Research Has the universe been designed to support life? Now we have a way to test it

[C C]

Falsifying anthropics - new paper in JCAP proposes a test for this idea
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1066752

In short:

“We exist, therefore the universe is made to host us”: the anthropic principle has sparked intense debate in cosmology since its first formulation. A new paper published in JCAP proposes a way to test it. To falsify it, all three of the following conditions must be confirmed by observations:

• Cosmic inflation occurred

• Axions exist

• Dark matter is not made of axions

If all these conditions are proven true, the anthropic principle would lose its validity, and our universe would appear highly improbable.

INTRO: The Anthropic Principle—stating that the universe we live in is fine-tuned to host life—was first proposed by Brandon Carter in 1973. Since then, it has sparked significant debate. Now, a new paper published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP), authored by Nemanja Kaloper, a physicist from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis, and Alexander Westphal, a professor at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), describes for the first time a way to experimentally test this assumption.

The anthropic principle (AP) can be formulated in different ways. These range from a simple description of the facts—“if we are here observing it, the universe evolved with the conditions necessary for the emergence of intelligent life,” known as the weak AP—to something a bit more radical: “the universe had to evolve in a way that led to our existence.” This stronger interpretation, called the strong AP, often ventures into metaphysical territory, suggesting a kind of “design” and moving beyond the realm of scientific inquiry into the universe.

The problem with the AP, according to many scientists, is that it is not particularly useful as a scientific tool because it does not generate testable, quantifiable predictions that could both expand our knowledge and subject the principle to scrutiny. Without this, it remains more of a philosophical conjecture than a scientific hypothesis.

The AP does, however, suggest that for our universe to develop as a hospitable place for carbon-based life, it must have started with a set of rather specific initial conditions. We infer this by observing, for example, the values of certain constants used in the equations that describe the universe—such as the gravitational constant, the electron charge, and Planck’s constant—which must be “just right.” Otherwise, we would have a very different and, most importantly, inhospitable universe.

By establishing the precise initial conditions implied by the AP and calculating, based on current physical models, how the universe would have evolved to its present state, we could compare the outcome to actual astronomical observations. Any discrepancies between theory and reality would provide a measure of the validity of the AP.

The new work by Nemanja Kaloper and Alexander Westphal offers some specific predictions that could find observational confirmation in the coming years.

To understand their proposal, some key elements in cosmological research must be outlined... (MORE - details, no ads)

[Zinjanthropos]

Ok I’ll ask…Who or what designed it?

Whatever the first surviving life form, it was adapted to live in the environment presented. It’s as if that’s the only life form that ever tried to make a go of it on Earth. There could have been many failed life attempts back then and perhaps those still happen. Does the process of life creation still go on, except we don’t see the evidence?

[C C]

Ok I’ll ask…Who or what designed it?

Whatever the first surviving life form, it was adapted to live in the environment presented. It’s as if that’s the only life form that ever tried to make a go of it on Earth. There could have been many failed life attempts back then and perhaps those still happen. Does the process of life creation still go on, except we don’t see the evidence?

I doubt we'll ever know for sure, since there is the additional threat from existing life itself to quickly snuff a tentative _X_ out, not just from the non-biological environment of Earth.

[Zinjanthropos]

Ok I’ll ask…Who or what designed it?

Whatever the first surviving life form, it was adapted to live in the environment presented. It’s as if that’s the only life form that ever tried to make a go of it on Earth. There could have been many failed life attempts back then and perhaps those still happen. Does the process of life creation still go on, except we don’t see the evidence?

I doubt we'll ever know for sure, since there is the additional threat from existing life itself to quickly snuff a tentative _X_ out, not just from the non-biological environment of Earth.

That doesn’t augur well for any newly created micro organisms on any planet where one of our machines touches. I’d like to think our space vessels are sterile when they do.

Solar system relatively young when compared to universe and it’s said the product of a supernova. So is it possible life on earth originated in a planetary system destroyed by a supernova?

[C C]

[...] Solar system relatively young when compared to universe and it’s said the product of a supernova. So is it possible life on earth originated in a planetary system destroyed by a supernova?

Difficult to say what the origins of the molecular cloud were that the solar system formed from. It may have been a mixture of dust and gas from multiple sources and generations of stellar objects/events and collisions. Early massive stars potentially lacking even mildly heavier elements may not have had rocky or particularly sophisticated bodies revolving around them.

There's probably still no agreement concerning what the original provenance of the most heavy elements is.

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https://www.space.com/strontium-heavy-el...erger.html

EXCERPTS: [...] The universe's three lightest elements — hydrogen, helium and lithium — were created in the earliest moments of the cosmos, just after the Big Bang. Most of the quantities of elements heavier than lithium, up to iron on the periodic table, were forged billions of years later, in the cores of stars.

But how elements heavier than iron, such as gold and uranium, were created has long been uncertain...

[...] For the first time, scientists have detected a newly born heavy element in space, forged in the aftermath of a collision between a pair of dead stars known as neutron stars. The findings shed light on how the universe's heaviest elements are created, providing a missing piece of the puzzle of chemical element formation, researchers said in a new study describing the findings...

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https://phys.org/news/2019-06-earth-heav...rnova.html

EXCERPTS: In a finding that may overthrow our understanding of where Earth's heavy elements such as gold and platinum come from, new research by a University of Guelph physicist suggests that most of them were spewed from a largely overlooked kind of star explosion far away in space and time from our planet.

Some 80 per cent of the heavy elements in the universe likely formed in collapsars, a rare but heavy element-rich form of supernova explosion from the gravitational collapse of old, massive stars typically 30 times as weighty as our sun, said physics professor Daniel Siegel.

That finding overturns the widely held belief that these elements mostly come from collisions between neutron stars or between a neutron star and a black hole, said Siegel.