WHY is the Universe the way it is? Why do the many parameters that define it happen to be the very values that give rise to habitable planets and life?
Many cosmologists subscribe to the “anthropic principle” – for us to observe them, the parameters simply have to be the size they are. Not so, says one physicist. He says that at least one other arrangement of cosmological parameters would lead to life.
Some of the Universe’s parameters seem precisely set at values that allow us to be here. If they were only slightly different, the heavy elements essential for life would not have formed, for example.…
