Ethan Siegel: Even the most successful scientific theories imaginable will, by their very nature, have a limited range of validity. But we can theorize whatever we like, and when a new theory meets the following three criteria…
Fine tuning
Is finding extraterrestrial life inevitable and does it prove the existence of God?
Hugh Ross: The discovery of life in another planetary system would indicate another instance of such divine intervention, meaning our universe would contain not just one origin-of-life miracle, but two.
Fine-tuning of the universe should be taught in school
Listening to Bill Nye scream “I suck,” one can’t help thinking that believing that we live in a meaningless universe may be a mental health hazard.
Can one apply the “Goldilocks Principle” of fine-tuning to DNA structure?
From what these researchers report, yes, one can definitely apply the principle. But then one must accept that biology shows evidence of design. “Just right” is rarely an accident.
Researchers: Toxic gases would slow emergence of life on exoplanets
Researchers: The habitable zone for complex life around many stars could be much smaller than previously thought once the concentrations of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide on planets is considered.
Logic vs. the multiverse: Gunter Bechly offers some insights
For example, how can we “partition an infinite multiverse so to arrive at the finite probabilities we observe and require (e.g. for quantum mechanics) because in an infinite multiverse everything that can happen happens an infinite (with the same cardinality) number of times?”
Fine-tuning of the universe: Pro and con
Robin Collins and Josh Rasmussen answer the strongest objections
If there IS a ninth planet out there…
Not Pluto (it was downgraded in 2006). What do you want to bet that the Big Ninth will turn out to be an instance of fine-tuning?
Why must fine-tuning be classed as a problem, not just a fact?
A good deal of effort goes into explaining away the fine-tuning of our universe and our Earth for life. But note the intellectually disastrous theses that are casually accepted as alternatives. What if we just accepted it? The way we accept the significance of 1/137.
Should we call the Pauli Exclusion Principle quantum fine-tuning?
Absent the Principle, says astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, “most horrifically, carbon-based organic compounds — the building blocks of all life as we know it — would be an impossibility for us.”
Fungus found that can oxidize gold
Imagine. Non-reactive gold does all that for fungus. Is there anything is nature that is absolutely useless?
Researchers: Maybe fundamental constants are not constant
Well, if they find anything at all, they could call fine-tuning “not-so-fine-tuning” and make a big point of it. If they don’t find anything, they can say they are still looking.
Rob Sheldon: Researchers showed that the carbon state of the universe IS fine-tuned
As opposed to “robust.” He says, “We really need a word for this racket: Pay me or I’ll defend ID.”
Shedding light on water’s weird qualities
Researchers: Both highly ordered and disordered tetrahedral arrangements give water its “peculiar properties.” The paper’s title spells this out: “Water-like anomalies as a function of tetrahedrality.”
At Quanta: Sun “stranger than astrophysicists imagined”
Naturally, they’re hoping for some new physics to come out of these surprises. Just think, if new physics comes out of this, it will be real physics too, not rubbish about the multiverse or how we are all living in some space alien’s giant sim world.