The multiverse is not a logical deduction from the state of our universe. It is an attempt to short circuit discussion of apparent fine-tuning by appealing to the idea that no conclusions can be drawn because there is an infinite series we do not know about.
Fine tuning
Raining carrots: Falsifiability does not, by itself, make for good science
In short, she is saying, the universe wasn’t supposed to be like this and that’s the basis for the current crisis in cosmology. One can always invent “falsifiable” theories but their falsifiability is not in itself a virtue; it is simply the basis for them being theories in science at all. The question of whether they should be pursued or funded is a quite different one.
Earth’s core hardened just in time to prevent magnetic field collapse
Around 565 million years ago, just when life was getting seriously underway: The finding, reported online January 28 in Nature Geoscience, supports an idea previously proposed by simulations that Earth’s inner core is relatively young. It also provides insight into how, and how quickly, Earth has been losing heat since its formation 4.54 billion years ago […]
Researchers: The Moon made life on Earth possible
From ScienceDaily: Earth most likely received the bulk of its carbon, nitrogen and other life-essential volatile elements from the planetary collision that created the moon more than 4.4 billion years ago, according to a new study by Rice University petrologists in the journal Science Advances. “From the study of primitive meteorites, scientists have long known […]
What happened to astronomer Martin Gaskell, dumped for thinking that the universe is designed?
All’s well that ends well, this time. But calling off the pack might be an idea too.
Astrophysicist: Alien hunters, please stop using the Drake Equation
Actually, the intuition that They Are Out There is not based on science; it is based on deductive reasoning.
50th anniversary of Apollo 8: Earth as a privileged planet
We know far more about that now than we did then.
Our solar system is a lot rarer than it was a quarter century ago
Two independent teams of astronomers recently looked into the matter: Astronomers have detected and measured the mass and/or orbital features of 3,869 planets in 2,887 planetary systems beyond the solar system. This ranks as a staggering rate of discovery, given that the first confirmed detection of a planet orbiting another hydrogen-fusion-burning star was as recent […]
Mathematician: Our universe is really chaotic; we just don’t see it that way
Is it only selective attention that causes us to see order in the universe? There is another, more interesting, explanation for the structure of the laws of nature. Rather than saying that the universe is very structured, say that the universe is mostly chaotic and for the most part lacks structure. The reason why we […]
What Earth vs Mars can teach us about fine tuning
We are told that Earth and Mars are like two siblings who have grown apart: “There was a time when their resemblance was uncanny: Both were warm, wet and shrouded in thick atmospheres. But 3 or 4 billion years ago, these two worlds took different paths”: Long ago, Mars stopped changing, while Earth continued to […]
Astonishing! A pop science article on fine-tuning that isn’t just plain stupid
Get a load of this: More recently, scientists have pointed out that if one tweaks many of the dimensionless physical constants — numbers like pi that are independent of units and simply exist as fundamental ideas — none of the cosmos we see would exist. One of these numbers is omega, the density parameter, which […]
Michael Denton on why the Sun is remarkably fit for life
Michael Denton, author of Children of Light: The astonishing properties of sunlight that made us possible, explains, We should feel very lucky. The sun is a giant fusion bomb, converting hydrogen to helium in an ongoing chain reaction in its dense, ultra-hot core. But fortunately for us, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by this runaway fusion […]
Fine-tuning: Is Earth’s magnetic core special too, compared to Mars’s?
Physicist S. Fred Singer offers some suggestions pertaining to the hunt for life on Mars: 1. Super-rotation of the core Seismic data, taken over a period of several years (Zhang, et al., Science 2005), suggest that the (innermost, solid iron) core is rotating slightly faster than the rest of the Earth, at 0.3-0.5 degrees/yr. We […]
The early universe was flat to a “suspicious” one part in a million
An “expert voice” astrophysicist explains that the Big Bang is now the “vanilla Big Bang,” which is unpopular because it doesn’t explain all observations: The Big Bang model is our most successful explanation for the history of the universe that we live in, and it’s ridiculously easy to encapsulate its core framework in a single, […]
Michael Denton: Every major science advance for 200 years shows unique fitness of Earth for life
Michael Denton has a new book out, Children of Light: The astonishing properties of sunlight that made us possible, on the fitness of sunlight for life: In this book, I have described the fitness of the radiation emitted by the Sun for life on Earth: the fitness of the atmosphere to ensure sufficient IR radiation […]