THE power of what is known as the anthropic principle has been challenged by a claim that it cannot, after all, make useful predictions about the universe.
Supporters of the anthropic principle – the idea that the universe has to be the way it is for us to be around to observe it – say that it can explain many otherwise mysterious properties of the cosmos. They tend to focus on the so-called cosmological constant, or lambda, which determines the strength of the force that appears to be pushing the universe apart. String theory, combined with the theory of inflation,…
