Incredible complexity: our finely-tuned existence.

"Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?" - Isaac Newton

Sit down, relax, and contemplate our situation with me for a minute. I think we are all a bit too busy, so much so that it causes us to be shortsighted. I will take an example from British astronomer Martin Rees' book Just Six Numbers to illustrate this:

"Start with a commonplace 'snapshot' - a man and a woman - taken from a distance of a few metres. Then imagine the same scene from successively more remote viewpoints, each ten times further away than the previous one. The second frame shows the patch of grass on which they are reclining; the third shows that they are in a public park; the fourth reveals some tall buildings; the next shows the whole city; and the next-but-one a segment of the Earth's horizon, viewed from so high up that it is noticeably curved. Two frames further on, we encounter a powerful image that has been familiar since the 1960's: the entire Earth - continents, oceans, and clouds - with its biosphere seeming no more than a delicate glaze and contrasting with the arid features of its Moon. Three more leaps show the inner Solar System, with the Earth orbiting the Sun farther out than Mercury and Venus; the next shows the entire Solar System. Four frames on (a view from a few light-years away), our Sun looks like a star among its neighbors. After three more frames, we see the billions of similar stars in the flat-disc of our Milky Way, stretching for tens of thousands of light-years. Three more leaps reveal the Milky Way as a spiral galaxy, along with Andromeda. From still further, these galaxies seem just two among hundreds of others - outlying members of the Vigro cluster of galaxies. A further leap shows shows that the Virgo cluster is itself just one rather modest cluster. Even if our imaginary telephoto had the power of the Hubble Space Telescope, out entire galaxy would, in the final frame, be a barely detectable smudge of light billions of light-years distant. The series ends there. Our horizon extends no further, but it has taken twenty-five leaps, each by a factor of ten, to reach the limits of our observable universe starting with the 'human' scale of a few metres. The other set of frames zooms inward rather than outward. From less than one metre, we see an arm; from a few centimeters - as close as we can look with an unaided eye - a small patch of skin. The next frames take us into the fine textures of human tissue, and then into an individual cell (there are a hundred time more cells in your body then there are stars in our galaxy). And then, at the limits of a powerful microscope, we probe the realm of individual molecules: long, tangled strings of proteins, and the double helix of DNA."

See what I'm getting at? Well catch your breath, and just think about our planet. While reading the above, you may have had a realization of how insignificant our "pale blue dot"(as Carl Sagan would say), the Earth, really is. So what makes our planet so special, among a possibility of millions of other planets? The most simple answer lies in that very thought, the answer being you and I, intelligent and complex beings, the existence of intelligent life, human beings able to consider their existence, play music, create art, and many more amazing things. So why Earth? Why not Mars or Mercury? What makes our existence on this earth, and in the universe, possible? Consider the following, just twelve of the possibly hundreds of constants that define life on our planet:

1.) Strong nuclear force constant
if larger: no hydrogen; nuclei essential for life would be unstable
if smaller: no elements other than hydrogen

2.) Weak nuclear force constant
if larger: too much hydrogen converted to helium in big bang, hence too much heavy element material made by star burning; no expulsion of heavy elements from stars
if smaller: too little helium produced from big bang, hence too little heavy element material made by star burning; no expulsion of heavy elements from stars

3.) Gravitational force constant
if larger: stars would be too hot and would burn up quickly and unevenly|
if smaller: stars would be so cool that nuclear fusion would not ignite, thus no heavy element production

4.) Electromagnetic force constant
if larger: insufficient chemical bonding; elements more massive than boron would be unstable to fission
if smaller: insufficient chemical bonding

5.) Ratio of electromagnetic force constant to gravitational force constant
if larger: no stars less than 1.4 solar masses, hence short and uneven stellar burning
if smaller: no stars more than 0.8 solar masses, hence no heavy element production

6.) Ratio of electron to proton mass
if larger: insufficient chemical bonding
if smaller: insufficient chemical bonding

7.) N, the number equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which measures the strength of the electrical forces that hold atoms together, divided by the force of gravity between them. If N had a few less zeros, only a short-lived miniature universe could exist, where animals could grow no larger than insects.

8.) E, with a value of .007 defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all atoms on earth were made. Its value controls the power of the sun, and also how stars transmit hydrogen
into all the elements on the periodic table. If E were .006 or .008, we could not exist.

9.) Omega, a cosmic number that measures the amount of material in our universe (galaxies, diffuse gas, 'dark matter'). Omega shows the relevance of gravity and expansion energy in the universe. If Omega were too high, the universe would have collapsed long ago; if too low no galaxies or stars would ever have formed.

10.) Lambda, a newly discovered cosmic 'antigravity', which controls the expansion of the universe (although it has no discernible effect on scales less than a billion light-years). It is very small, but if it were any larger, galaxies would never have formed, nor stars, and not you or I either.

11.) Q, upon which the fabric of our universe depends, is the ratio of two fundamental energies and is about 1/100,000. If Q were smaller, the universe would be inert and structureless, if it were larger, the universe would be a very violent place, where no star or solar system could survive, a universe filled with huge black holes.

12.) D, the number of dimensions in our world, three. We of course have the dimension time, but time is much different, in that it only has one known direction, forward.

There are many more constants similar to these that also define our existence. The last six numbers are those addressed in Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees. He and many other physicists and astronomers today dream of finding a way to connect all of these constants, making a so-called "theory of everything".

So as you can see, we are both insignificant and amazingly special in our very existence. But how did these near-perfect conditions develop? Who or what developed them, and when? This is of course a question that may be forever impossible to answer with assurance. On the next few pages, we will have a look at just a few of the theories that have been developed regarding this. Each is very interesting and intriguing, but we must remember the limits of our own minds and modern knowledge when evaluating these beliefs and theories, and be reminded that we have only taken a few short steps on the road to discovery.