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. Many prominent cosmologists think this is no accident, and their view is enshrined in the 1986 book
But the principle could have its legs knocked from under it by a theoretical study by ...
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