Is that probable? How would we know? Philosopher Stephen C. Meyer offers some suggestions:
In the case of the inflationary cosmology, both the shutoff energy and the time interval in which that shutoff occurs have to be precisely finely tuned to generate a new universe, even in theory. In the string theoretical landscape, multiple things have to be finally tuned — the most important of which is setting the first possible universe at the highest energy level so it can cascade down the landscape to explore all the other possible ones. So that all the different universes eventually are instantiated or come into existence.
Even though the multiverse is attempting to explain the fine tuning, it actually ends up presupposing prior sources of unexplained fine tuning. And therefore it doesn’t ultimately explain the fine tuning; it just pushes the fine tuning problem back one generation… Except that there is one thing we know from experience that always produces fine tuning, or that is always associated with fine tuning, and that’s intelligence. Think of the other systems that we would say are finely tuned, a fine French recipe, an exquisite Swiss clock, or watch. Any fine piece of machinery, an internal combustion engine. Digital code in the software program, or the fine tuning that we see in the universe.
News, “Is ours one of a few working universes among countless flops?” at Mind Matters News (August 28, 2022)
Takehome: No. For one thing, Meyer says, even though the multiverse attempts to explain fine tuning, it actually ends up presupposing unexplained prior sources of fine tuning.
Here’s the first portion: If DNA is a language, who is the speaker? Philosopher Steve Meyer talks about the significance of Francis Crick’s sequence hypothesis that showed that DNA is a language of life. What sort of speaker can utter a language that produces living beings? Is it a fluctuation of a multiverse or an intelligence that underlies nature?
And the second: Has a superintellect monkeyed with our universe’s physics? Groundbreaking astronomer Fred Hoyle was a staunch atheist but then he tried showing that carbon, essential to life, could form easily… It got worse: To form carbon at all, gravitational forces must be balanced just right with the electromagnetic forces. That’s just the start…
The third: How fine tuned was our universe’s debut? The mind boggles. All the details that were there at the beginning and all work together… The math is amazing. The fact of fine-tuning — both of forces and their relationships — is generally accepted, irrespective of physicists’ religious views or lack thereof.
You may also wish to read: Theoretical physicist: Can’t avoid a beginning for our universe. Recent shakeups from the James Webb Space Telescope images invite fundamental questions like, Does the universe even have a beginning? The big Telescope made new data available, some of it “amazing.” And if it had only confirmed what we know, how would we know it had ever left the launch pad?