#165 – What it takes to produce a universe

Getting twenty five fundamental constants and physical laws just right to produce a universe full of electrons, neutrons, and protons … all the way up to planets and stars

Last week, we learned that “Fine Tuning” can mean three very different things.  Today, we’re going to explore the first of those three: the exquisite precision needed to produce a universe made up of “usable stuff” … electrons, protons, and neutrons, all the way up to planets and stars. Our guests today — Elie Feder (PhD in mathematics) and Aaron Zimmer (physics, mathematics and philosophy) — are the hosts of a podcast which focuses exclusively on that question.

Scientists have long been looking for a Grand Unifying Theory: something that would explain everything.  What they’ve found are a variety of physical laws and a collection of 25 different fundamental constants.  And there’s something odd about those constants: they’re not straightforward numbers that derive cleanly from any equation … they can only be measured. And when measured, they’re not simple numbers: they’re unpredictable and often involve long strings of digits.  They look strange, contrived, and … “ugly.”  In our metaphor from last week, it’s like trying to explain why there are 1760 yards in a mile: … why 1760? … why not 2000, or 1500, or even possibly 1750?  Why?  Who came up with this number?  This was puzzling to astrophysicists.  A big mystery.

But as those astrophysicists continued to put a microscope on those constants, they learned something new; something very provocative.  As they developed methods to better measure the constants, they found the constants were tuned to an exceptionally high degree of precision. And if the constants were changed by a little bit, the equations wouldn’t work.  The analogy that’s often used is balancing a pencil on its sharpened tip.  It was as if we learned that it’s not 1760 yards to a mile, but rather 1759.4691269378 yards.  And adjusting that by even a few per cent was enough to make it so that global distribution networks like Purolator and Fedex would no longer be able to function.  Getting back to cosmology, changing these 25 constants by even a few percent means the universe can no longer make electrons or atoms …. can no longer make planets or suns …. can’t make the variety of types of atoms needed for life!

And then some highly educated people began to wonder if this exceptionally high degree of precision — this Fine Tuning — is actually the key to the Big Mystery referred to above.  There’s a future purpose to those constants: to create a universe full of “usable stuff,” including life.  Those constants aren’t random, but have to be precisely tuned in order to achieve that goal. As if those values were selected!  Some, for ideological reasons, opt for explanations that involve chance and luck, like multiverse theories or infinite iterations of a single universe; but Aaron and Elie show how those “explanations” actually fall flat when you look at them more carefully. Verbs like “selected” and “tuned” suggest agency, and intelligence. Of course, this is where theists will point to God, while atheists — again, for ideological reasons — might suggest we’re living in a computer simulation. 

We guarantee that if you listen carefully to what they say, and keep an open mind that doesn’t automatically discount logical inferences that have ideological consequences, you’ll see that this is not a mere God-of-the-gaps explanation intended to replace the reigning luck-of-the-gaps explanations.

Let us know if you think differently (we tell you how to contact us at the end of the episode).

Find out more about our guests Elie Feder and Aaron Zimmer at their podcast: Physics to God.

If you liked this episode, you might also like the one we released three years ago on the same topic, when our guest was an astronomer: Dr. Robert Mann.

Episode image by Andrew: it’s amazing what he can come up with when I simply ask for “something with knobs and dials that produces galaxies.”

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