"It might spread over a wide range, implying life can take many forms, or it might require exactly the parameter values which lead to our life-form. "As we are the only life-form and this is the only Universe we know, we have no information whatsoever about how Life extends over the rest of the parameter space," the researchers explain in their study. The problem here, they explain, is that we don't know what we can't observe, which leads to a sampling bias. The researchers define a parameter space (a mathematically quantified collection) made of all possible universes with different CCs, and then try to determine a probability for life (either as we know it, or as we don't know it) within this collection. Maor, Krauss, and Starkman quantify how strongly anthropic arguments rely on the assumption that we are a typical life form. However, the claim that life could not exist in a different universe is based on the assumption that we are a typical life form. The anthropic explanation usually claims that life could not exist in a universe with other conditions, and therefore we would not be able to observe a different universe. Scientists have observed the CC to be not too large or too small that the universe would collapse or rip apart, but about right to allow matter to form galaxies and planets – a habitat for Earthly life. For example, one of these conditions is the dominant contribution of something that acts like a cosmological constant (CC) to the energy density of the universe. Importantly, anthropic reasoning implies that intelligent life requires the precise conditions found in our universe. “Moreover, we have provided a quantitative understanding of this issue.” “In our work, we have tried to point out the hidden assumptions of anthropic reasoning: in a sense, you need to assume what you are trying to prove,” the three scientists told. As they write in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters, the anthropic principle is "based fundamentally on ignorance rather than knowledge." So they have tested the robustness of the anthropic explanation, stripping it down to its simplest scientific elements in order to determine what it truly can tell us about the universe we live in. And why is the universe fine-tuned to support life like us? Because, if it were otherwise, we wouldn't be here to observe it.Ĭase Western Reserve University physicists Irit Maor, Lawrence Krauss, and Glenn Starkman find this explanation troubling. Anthropic reasoning uses the fact that the universe seems fine-tuned to support life as we know it in order to explain various physical phenomena that are otherwise unexplained.
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