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 bomb (and that of most other stars) is almost entirely light and heat (or infrared). These have precisely the characteristics needed for advanced life to thrive on the Earth’s surface.
No matter how unfashionable the notion may be in some intellectual circles, the evidence is unequivocal: Ours is a cosmos whose laws appear finely tuned for our type of life.
The crucial visual band, which has the right energy levels for photochemistry, occupies only a tiny part of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. To grasp just how small, picture just a few playing cards in a stack stretching from here to beyond the Andromeda galaxy. Andromeda is more than 2.5 million light years away. This playing card illustration, then, represents a fraction so small as to be beyond ordinary human comprehension.
And here is the key point: It’s thanks only to the fine tuning of the laws and constants of nature that we live in a universe awash in radiation from this tiny swath of the EM spectrum — the life-permitting swath.Michael Denton, “NASA’s Parker Probe Kisses the Sun — and Rightly So” at The Stream
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See also: Michael Denton: Every major science advance for 200 years shows unique fitness of Earth for life