finetuneduniverse

THE FINE-TUNED UNIVERSE
Adam Blatner

(Based on a lecture to Senior University Georgetown, a lifelong learning program, on June 13, 2001;
Posted August 16, 2005) Interestingly, it is related to a current controversy, so related articles include
(1) Intelligent Design, a Commentary; and
(2) A Biblical God: Questioning the Leaps of Faith. This explores in greater detail the tendency to extend the Intelligent Design argument to support traditional religion.

This is being published on my website partly in response to the recent flurry of interest in the "Intelligent Design" movement. Much of the recent focus has been on that aspect that deals with Darwinian theories of evolution, and whether gaps in the theory should be pointed out. The political problem is that there are a number of conservative Christians who see these gaps as a significant weakening of the anti-supernaturalist bias of contemporary science, and as a more subtle support for a variation of creationism that supports a Biblical-based cosmology–and by extension, political authority. My reaction is interestingly mixed, and commented on in a related web-page paper, Perspectives on Intelligent Design. However, the part that concedes some plausibility in the Intelligent Design argument–though not in its foolish conclusions–relates less to the problems of complex biological evolution, but to the even more basic and as-yet-unsolved mysteries related to the incredible fine-tuning of the basic physical constants of the cosmos.

This concept of a fine-tuned universe refers to the growing number of discoveries of ways in which, if the basic physical laws of nature and circumstances of our existence were even a slight bit different, a little more this way, a little less that way, things wouldn't work the way they do, and in a larger sense, neither life nor even the planets and stars would even exist!

When I was growing up, there was a sense that nature "evolved," that given enough time, everything could just happen by chance. This, it turns out, was a naive and superficial view, but at the time, it seemed more scientific than the old view that the universe had been created in seven days. As it happens, though, the scientists have been what I call "running the numbers," examining the results of the new discoveries that have happened because of new technologies, telescopes that can see farther, other kinds of telescopes that can see types of radiation other than light– ultra-violet, infra-red, x-rays, radio waves; and at the sub-atomic levels, too, instruments that help us figure out what atoms are made of, and from that, how stars function, how they burn.

Biologists have also been looking at what is needed for the existence of life, and looking at evolution more closely. Chemists have been working in all of these areas, also. And what all these and other types of scientists have found is that in not just a few, but a good many ways, if circumstances had been different by only a tiny amount, just a little bit more or less, well, then things wouldn't work.

Let's look at some general ways this is true, and then I'll go into some explanations, because it's all really quite beautiful.

First, the Big Bang: Apparently, about 13 billion years ago, give or take a few, all the matter in the universe as we know it, and all the energy that keeps it all going, seems to have begun in a flash of unimaginable smallness, and has expanded since then. However, if the energy of this Big Bang had been a little less, all the mass, the matter, and its gravity, would have after a few billion years, slowed that expansion to a stall and it would have fallen back on itself just like a rock you throw into the air comes to a point when it stops and falls back down to earth, pulled by gravity. There would have been what's been called a "Big Crunch." But this didn't happen.

On the other hand, if the energy of the Big Bang had been a tiny bit more, all the matter that was created would have been spread out so thinly that after a million years or so that stars wouldn't have formed. There needed to be enough continuing density so that the matter in the cosmos would exert enough gravitational force on the matter around it so that it clumped into stars and galaxies. If the "blast" had been too strong, matter would have been spread so thinly that this clumping wouldn't have happened. It had to be incredibly finely balanced, and physicists and astronomers have been amazed at this balance.

Several other dynamics of the Big Bang have been figured out, and again this fine- tuning has been impressive. Near the beginning, within a few seconds, the great amount of energy had begun to condense into matter, according to Einstein's equation of E=mc2, and what happens is, again, amazing. In that process, the first thing that happens is that matter is created along with antimatter. There is this stuff called anti-matter that we can detect in minute amounts in certain radioactive processes or in cyclotron experiments, and scientists have figured out that energy when it is converted to matter– or vice versa– involves some transformations into both matter and anti-matter. Now because if the two types of matter ever encounter each other they annihilate each other with a strong burst of released energy, they can't co-exist. Working backward, though, and with some other calculations, they found that in the Big Bang, for every billion particles of anti-matter that were annihilated along with a billion particles of matter, well, there was one particle of matter left over. Talk about fine tuning. And the result was just enough matter to still be enough to fill our known universe, and all the energy it took to ignite the stars and keep everything in motion.

The Four Basic Forces

At present, science has identified four basic forces that operate in the cosmos: Gravity, Electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. And, as I said, in the last half century or so, they've been running the numbers. What they've found is that if any of these forces had been even a tiny bit stronger or weaker, everything else would have been thrown out of balance. Stars wouldn't have formed as they did, they wouldn't burn as they do, and the difference would make it impossible for life to evolve.

It should be noted that these basic forces could have theoretically have had any strength. There was no obvious reason for them to be just as strong or weak as they were, nothing that obviously "caused" them to be set at just the value they have. That is, science has not yet acknowledged the possibility of what Aristotle called the "formal" cause, also known as the teleological cause–that is, it's that way so that we can be here to enjoy it. But this seems to be one of the answers that may be more plausible than some of the weird alternatives that a few hold-outs are offering.

The Qualities of Atoms

Another group of variables that are fascinating is that the atoms that make up the bulk of life have certain qualities that, again, are not obvious nor required. Some, indeed, are quite subtle.

One of these is carbon, which is the mainstay of biological processes. Carbon is the sixth atom in size, it has six protons, and six electrons–two in an inner orbit and four in its outer orbit, which makes it possible to connect with up to four other atoms at a time. This is near the maximum of chemical connections, and so carbon is unique among the ninety-two elements in its capacity to create complex molecules.

So we need lots of carbon for life to exist, and carbon is created in the bowels of the stars. But it requires a peculiar chain of fusion events, beyond the fusion of hydrogen into helium, which is the source of energy that fuels hydrogen bombs and keeps the stars as hot as they are. But in addition to being a source of heat and light, the cores of stars have the pressure, due to the gravitational force of all that matter, and the heat due to the power of the fusion reaction, to be an "alchemical crucible," a high-pressure chamber in which even larger atoms can be created, and so they are.

The bigger the atom, though, the hotter and higher pressure it needs to be, so that the larger atoms only happen in the cores of very large stars, much larger than our sun, and even then, only when they are undergoing the final phases of their own collapse, called the "super-nova," when they burn–if you can imagine this–and you can't–none of us really can–millions of times hotter than the sun!

Anyway, back to the creation of the smaller atoms that make up most of our being–even then, it's tricky. For example, there's a fusion reaction that requires the collision of basic atoms, building from a 4-atom core up to a 6 or 8-atom core, building carbon or oxygen. Now, atoms, like everything else, have their own pure vibrational frequency, the rhythm at which they vibrate most naturally-- just like different glasses can, when rubbed in a certain way, give off a sound. It turns out, when they run the numbers, that for fusion reactions to occur at an optimal level, the vibrational frequencies of the atomic fragment just preceding the operation to be harmonized with the frequency of the atom that accepts the nuclear fragment, like passing a baton in a relay race with swinging arms. And it so happens that the vibrational frequencies line up, and there was no obvious reason why this should happen–it was just a coincidence.

But a well known physicist was so impressed by this seeming coincidence that he remarked that "someone must be monkeying with the numbers." It's this kind of coincidence, happening again and again, that makes up the substance of my talk about fine-tuning.

The Earth

Okay, let's shift the stage from the stars to the earth. If this planet had been too far from the sun, it would have been too cold, obviously; or too close, too hot. But its orbit is not like the orbits of most of the other planets. They're more elliptical, which means that they're just a little egg-shaped, skewed off center. And that means that, say, with the planet Mars, there's a time in its orbit when it's closer to the sun and another time that it's farther, and the difference is almost 40 million miles! Whereas with our planet, mother Earth, there's only about 4 million miles difference out of the distance of an average of 83 million miles. So, our planet's orbit, though elliptical, is almost circular in comparison, which is good, because in January, when we're closest to the sun, well, we hardly notice, because in the northern hemisphere, the angle of the earth makes it winter. The point is that if our planet had a more elliptical orbit, the temperature swings on our planet would be more extreme, perhaps incompatible with life, or at least any more complex forms of life.

There are a number of aspects of this planet that are just so perfect for life, including such startling phenomena as earthquakes, radioactivity, lightning, and volcanoes. In the short run, such phenomena tend to be bad for those living in the vicinity, but in the long run, each plays an essential role in the maintenance of the overall balance of life-giving qualities.

Earthquakes are the side-effect of tectonic shifts, the slipping around of the crust of the earth, the continents, which in their collisions, lift up long-buried sea-beds, raising them into mountains, and allow this organic material to then be subjected to the atmospheric forces of erosion, thereby over millions of years, re-circulating the basic elements required for life.

Volcanoes, in the early phases of the earth, brought forth onto its rocky surface the clouds of steam, water having been originally combined with rock. (That's the way it is in outer space, in comets, in asteroids. Water molecules are fixed in crystalline form with minerals, silicon, aluminum, etc., and there are massive amounts of water in the subterranean mantle of the earth. Volcanoes bring it up to the surface, along with carbon dioxide and other gases. And they continue to help supply the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, which are in turn necessary to keep our planet not too hot and not too cold.

Lightning needs to happen about the level that it does happen–too much more, and there would be too may forest fires. But those electrical discharges also burn nitrogen, combining nitrogen with oxygen, creating nitrates. Plants and animals need nitrogen, which is an essential component of proteins, DNA, and other basic components. But life can't access it in its gaseous form of two atoms combined. It needs to be in a chemical form, such as Nitrates, combined with oxygen, and this is then absorbed by plants and eventually animals. So, too little lightning and there wouldn't be enough nitrates around to support life.

Radioactivity? Well, even very small amounts of the radioactive elements undergo fission. And if surrounded by closely packed earth, they heat up the earth. Geologists have come to the surprising conclusion that the reason the earth's core is so hot is not only because of the pressure down there, but also because of the stored-up radioactivity. This heat makes the core molten, it circulates, they think that accounts for the magnetic field around the earth, which in turn not only accounts for the aurora borealis, the northern lights, but more functionally, diverts the large majority of cosmic rays and solar radiations other than light which would, if the magnetic field were weaker, penetrate the atmosphere and bathe life in an excess of radiation, effectively killing it off.

Implications

The major implication of this growing awareness of the fine-tuned nature of the universe is the suggestion that there is a kind of innate intelligence in the cosmos, which many see as scientific evidence for the existence of God. What kind of God is not suggested by the evidence, whether it be a God of the Bible, or something more like the Chinese concept of the Tao, or the Source of Consciousness in the primal Yoga disciplines of Hinduism, or the Great Spirit of the Native Americans... but still, it suggests something more mind-like in contrast to the vision of a truly impersonal, random, semi-mechanistic cosmos, something that "just happened."

That was the world view among many intellectuals in the mid-1950s, as I said, when I was growing up. It was a time in which science prided itself (I use that term, "pride" intentionally) on being more advanced than religion, which was seen to be laced with superstition. Of course, the religion they were talking about was the institutional type that dominated Western Culture for the previous millennium and more, and this whole tension between science and religion should be recognized as being also an aspect of the greater political tension between the forces of institutionalized religion and monarchy and the forces of emerging rationalism and democracy during the Eighteenth Century.

This tension continued into the Twentieth Century, and continues today, with pressures on the constitutional separation between church and state. Science back then saw itself as a more rational counter to a type of religion that they perceived as being counter to rationality itself.. Such as a religion that absolutely rejected all aspects of evolution.

But the truth is that more sophisticated thinkers on both sides have been finding areas in common, moving away from the need to take polarized positions. Many theologians, such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin–one of the more eloquent–and others, have found that evolution is really quite compatible with a slightly modified view of theology, and many scientists find that a belief in God is compatible with science.

Now comes this group of ideas from science, and it goes with a growing movement. I define a movement as a social phenomena marked by, in this case, an increasing number of articles in magazines, national and international conferences, websites, chat rooms on the internet, books, etc. The field is one called "intelligent design." A number of Christian theologians, and some from other religions, too, have used the developments in science to uphold their own brand of theology; while some others suggest that this intellectual position, this theory that the fine-tuned nature of the universe is evidence for God, is very general and doesn't support the validity of any particular religion; rather, it supports the common intuition of deep thinkers, meditators, inspired spiritual sages and teachers, etc., that we are part of something that in a broad sense of the word is "alive," is an ongoing force in the cosmos.

It is in this sense, too, that many scientists admit to experiencing something akin to a religious feeling, when contemplating the cosmos, whether it be in the form of the vast expanses of astronomy, the seemingly infinitesimal dynamics of the sub-atomic world, or the mysteries of biology, ecology, geology, and the interactions among all these realms.

Around 1720 a theologian, William Paley, articulated the argument from design more forcefully, although many have suggested the same idea from the Greeks onward: The world is such a complex place that it couldn't have happened by chance. However, by the end of the Eighteenth Century, as people became aware of the nature of fossils and the evidence of geology, these fields coming into their own during that period, the paradigm had shifted: A more mechanistic view emerged, the idea that the world emerged in the course of a seemingly infinite ongoingness of time and chance.

For example, an eminent scientist, Pierre Laplace, is said to have made a presentation of the current state of astronomy to the Emperor Napoleon. When asked by Napoleon, "But Monsieur Laplace, you have not mentioned the workings of God in all this?" the scientist replied, "Mon Empereur, I have no need of that hypothesis."

Darwin was only a kind of spokesperson for this greater cultural shift, and his work became a bit of an icon. In fact, there were still many small holes in the theory. It didn't explain everything, especially the emergence of life itself. Again, the argument shouldn't be viewed as being between absolute creationists of the Bishop Usher type–Bishop Usher being a late Eighteenth-Century clergyman in England who calculated, based on the begats of the Bible, that the world was created in the year 4004 BC, and even gave the date and time of day!–and absolute naturalists who deny the operation of any forces other than blind chance. As I said, there is an increasing middle ground occupied by thoughtful people who can consider alternative possibilities.

Conclusion

To conclude, the seeming tension between science and religion is being dissolved in a growing movement from a surprising quarter–science itself, which, in running the numbers associated with the general discoveries in cosmology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, ecology, biology, and related fields, are finding a host of variables which seem to have been designed to be optimal for the emergence and sustenance of life on this planet. A little more or a little less, sometimes one part out of a quintillion or more, would make the whole house of cards collapse. What can account for these coincidences, this series of interrelated coincidences? The conclusion in the minds of an increasing number of rigorous thinkers is that the workings of an intelligent designer, a Divine force, is an explanation that may not be easily dismissed.

Finally, I'll conclude with a poem by Walt Whitman:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

The world is a marvelous place, and there is a certain romanticism in directly perceiving it in simple wonder, to be sure. Yet I want to put in a plug for the learn'd astronomer–okay, the one ol' Walt was listening to was perhaps too dry to keep his poet-audience's attention, but those charts, those proofs, well, if you look at them with the right perspective, with a certain attitude, they can be pretty beautiful in what they disclose--thrilling, in fact!

References

Barrow, J. D. & Tipler, F. (1986). The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Behe, M. (1996). Darwin's Black Box. New York: The Free Press.

Behe, M., Dembski, W. , & Meyer. (2000). Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe. Weathersfield Institute. ($12.95, www.discovery.org)

Corey, M. A. (1993). God and the New Cosmology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Davies, Paul C. W. (1982). The Accidental Universe. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. (Also by this author, a noted physicist:
    - (1983). God and the new physics. New York: Simon & Schuster.
    - (1992). The Mind of God. New York: Simon & Schuster.
    - (1999). The fifth miracle: The search for the origin and meaning of life. New York: Simon & Schuster. (Proposes an as-yet-unknown causal principle towards complexity in the cosmos, p. 20, 259.)

Dembski, William A. (1998). The design inference. Cambridge, England: Cambridge U. Press. $54.95. Physics math library.

Dembski, William A. (1999). Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology. Downders Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press

Denton, Michael J.. (1998). Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe. New York: The Free Press.

Moreland, J. P. (1994). The creation hypothesis: Scientific evidence for an Intelligent Designer. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Overman, Dean L. (1997). A case against accident and self-organization. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Ross, H. (1993). The Creator and the Cosmos. Colorado Springs: NavPress.

Joke:
      The scientist approached God and said, "Listen, we've decided we no longer need you. Nowadays, we can clone people, transplant hearts and do all kinds of things that were once considered miraculous."
      God patiently heard him out, and then said, "All right. To see whether or not you still need me, why don't we have a man-making constest?"
       "Okay, great!" the scientist said.
      "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam," God said.
      "That's fine," replied the scientist, and bent to scoop up a handful of dirt.
       "Whoa!" God said, shaking his head in disapproval. "Not so fast, pal. You get your own dirt."
                                                (--Reader's Digest, around July, 2001, contributed by Mary E. Chancellor.)

    "We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages.
    The child knows someone must have written those books.
    It does not know how.
    It does not understand the languages in which they are written.
    The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is.
    That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.
    We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.
     Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."
                                         (A. Einstein)

I'd be interested in your comments and suggestions. Contact me at:
Adam@blatner.com

THE FINE-TUNED UNIVERSE Adam Blatner