I just started reading "On The Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory”, by Thomas Hertog, who was Hawkings’ closest collaborator. Hawkings was one of the greatest physicists of the last 50 years, and I wanted to catch up on his thinking.
Unfortunately, Chapter One got off to a bad start. Hertog discusses at some length that apparent paradox that the universe appears to have been designed to support the rise of life. This appearance is based on the fact that so many of the fundamental constants of the universe are exactly right to permit the universe in which we live. To put it another way, if one of these fundamental constants were just 1% larger or smaller, life would be impossible. Why does everything line up so perfectly, he (and Hawkings) wondered. They call this concept “biofavorability”.
Yes, the fundamental constants of the universe are just right for the formation of life — but do you expect life to arise in any universe where the constants aren’t just right for the formation of life? If ten billion universes formed, the only ones in which life could arise are the ones in which the fundamental constants are just right.
For example, if the constant for the strength of gravitational fields was just a little bigger, then stars would be hotter and would burn out sooner, depriving living systems of the time they need to develop. If another fundamental constant were just a little different, then carbon would not be formed in supernova explosions, and there wouldn’t be enough carbon in the universe to form the hydrocarbons fundamental to life.
There’s something almost Panglossian in Hawkings' thinking. Of course we’re in a universe where the fundamental constants are just right — if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to notice it! If the asteroid hadn’t hit Yucatan 65 million years ago, we probably wouldn’t be here, either. That doesn’t make the asteroid some act of divine providence; it was just one of the many twists and turns in the rise of life on earth.
“Biofavorability" is crap
We can easily dismiss the notion of the ‘biofavorable’ universe with a simple analogy. Isn’t it astounding that there are eucalyptus trees in Australia that provide the perfect environment for koala bears? If those forests of eucalyptus trees had not arisen, koala bears would never exist. Yet they DO exist — why is the environment in Australia so perfectly suited for koala bears?
For that matter, have you ever considered the amazing fact that there are dark caves with water in them that provide the perfect environment for species of blind fish? If those fish were forced to live in illuminated water, they would be quickly gobbled up by sighted fish. How is it that the earth provided the unique environment necessary for these unique creatures?
One last example of how biofriendly the planet is comes from “black smokers”, locations on the deep ocean floor where geothermally heated water saturated with chemicals arises from deep beneath the surface. These black smokers host an abundent ecosystem based on microbes that base their metabolism on these chemicals. These microbes, unlike any other form of life on this planet, do not ultimately trace their food source to sunlight. No, the entire ecosystem is fed by the chemicals emerging from the ocean floor. Isn’t it amazing that the earth has provided a special place for these unique creatures? For more on these ecosystems, see this.
They don’t understand what life is
But there’s a far more important issue here. Back in 1943, another great physicist, Erwin Schrodinger, a refugee from Nazi Germany, delivered three lectures in Dublin on the topic “What is Life?” He later collected his material into a book.
Now, Schrodinger didn’t spend much time worrying about hydrocarbons, water, or any of the other particulars of life on earth. His emphasis was on the absolute fundamental concept: negentropy. Life is merely the result of a system responding to huge amounts of negentropy pouring through it. Our planet was formed out of a cloud of gas that included atoms of every element, all randomly distributed. I’m certain that, in its earliest history, the elements in the earth were pretty much scattered about randomly. But over billions of years, they gathered together. Various processes gathered some elements together. Thus we can find veins of pure gold in the earth. Some process concentrated the gold together. Another process somehow concentrated enough uranium together to form a functioning natural nuclear reactor long ago at a place we now call Oklo. It is entirely natural for systems to concentrate things.
Life is one of those systems; it captures negentropy and harnesses it. There’s nothing magical about it, although it is complicated. It’s just physics at work.
But for some reason, most scientists cannot imagine life outside of the narrow specifics of terrestrial life. They seek life by looking for planets whose temperature range permits liquid water, with enough carbon and other earthlike properties. What nonsense! I have elsewhere raised the possibility of life forming inside the sun. (Also here). I have discussed other possibilities such as the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. I was wrong about the probably of life appearing in subterranean lakes in Antarctica because I underestimated the amount of negentropy available in the form of concentrations of chemicals in these lakes.
A completely different universe could form in which all the fundamental constants of that universe are so wildly different that there would be no atoms, no stars, no galaxies — nothing that we recognize. But there’s one thing we can be absolutely certain of: if a new universe formed through something like the Big Bang, then its initial negentropy content would be stupendous, just like it was with our universe. I find it hard to believe that all that negentropy would just sit around in a universe in which nothing ever happens.
One other thing: it truly is pointless to talk about other universes. My definition of “the universe”, which I believe to be correct, is “everything that we could, theoretically, interact with at some point in time.” If there exists another universe, or many other universes, then by my definition we’d never be able to interact with any component of them.
But if you wish to define the universe as something with secret back doors to other universes, be my guest. Good luck finding those secret back doors.