Related papers: Life in a random universe: Sciama's argument recon…
The fine-tuning of the universe for life, the idea that the constants of nature (or ratios between them) must belong to very small intervals in order for life to exist, has been debated by scientists for several decades. Several criticisms…
The Anthropic Principle has been with us since the 1970s. This Principle is advanced to account for the "fine tuning" of the 25 constants of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Were these constants very different, life could not exist.…
Current evidence suggests that the cosmological constant is not zero, or that we live in an open universe. We examine the implications for the future under these assumptions, and find that they are striking. If the Universe is cosmological…
This short paper proposes an alternative theory to Anthropic Principle. According to our interpretation, the Universe is not "fine-tuned" for life, but "roughly-tuned" for computation and its biofilness is only a phenomenon. This standpoint…
It is fair to say that the deepest mystery in our understanding of nature is the birth of our universe. Much of the dilemma over the last decades comes from the extraordinarily small probability that the universe started with the high…
There is increasing evidence that the universe may have a small cosmological constant. We suggest a scheme for naturally generating a small cosmological constant. Our idea requires the presence of a discrete accidental symmetry which is…
It has been suggested that reality works like a quantum computer, but such claims are just words if they are not backed up by sound mathematics. In pursuit of the fundamental equations I look to string theory where physicists led by Mike…
Randomness is an indispensable resource in modern science and information technology. Fortunately, an experimentally simple procedure exists to generate randomness with well-characterized devices: measuring a quantum system in a basis…
I examine some recent findings in cosmology and their potential implications for the emergence of life in the universe. In particular, I discuss the requirements for carbon-based life, anthropic considerations with respect to the nature of…
The Simulation Argument posed by Bostrom (2003) suggests that we may be living inside a sophisticated computer simulation. If post-human civilizations eventually have both the capability and desire to generate such Bostrom-like simulations,…
It is argued that human consciousness is likely to have emerged during the self-consistent evolution of the physical universe, through the gradual accumulation of biological entities' ability to tap into the intrinsic non-deterministic…
The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life has received a great deal of attention in recent years, both in the philosophical and scientific literature. The claim is that in the space of possible physical laws, parameters and…
The discovery of accelerated expansion of the universe opened the possibility of new scenarios for the doom of our spacetime, besides aeternal expansion and a final contraction. In this paper we review the chances which may await our…
Randomness is a central concept to statistics and physics. Here, a statistical analysis shows experimental evidence that tossing coins and finding last digits of prime numbers are identical regarding statistics for equally likely outcomes.…
Although the current galaxy models yield calculations consistent with much of the data, many irregularities exist, exceptions have been found to the current models, the $\Lambda$CDM model apparently fails on galaxy scales, dark matter…
The probability that life spontaneously emerges in a suitable environment (abiogenesis) is one of the major unknowns in astrobiology. Assessing its value is impeded by the lack of an accepted theory for the origin of life, and is further…
Is the universe computable? If so, it may be much cheaper in terms of information requirements to compute all computable universes instead of just ours. I apply basic concepts of Kolmogorov complexity theory to the set of possible…
Randomness is an unavoidable notion in discussing quantum physics, and this may trigger the curiosity to know more of its cultural history. This text is an invitation to explore the position on the matter of Thomas Aquinas, one of the most…
I present a short and almost irrefutable arguments that life does use quantum mechanical correlations in an essential way. The very same argument applies, mutatis mutandis, in relation to any abundant resource, and observations bears this…
We demonstrate that the system of fine-tuning constraints for life is, in a sense, overdetermined: the a priori probability of its feasibility is extremely low, especially in the chemical sector. This entails that the structure of the…