Related papers: Time is Life
The anthropic principle implies that life can emerge and be sustained only in a narrow range of values of fundamental constants. Here we show that anthropic arguments can set powerful constraints on {\em transient} variations of the…
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.…
The claim that life is an emergent phenomenon exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an…
This paper suggests that a universal solution to the Fermi paradox exists and can be derived directly from the definition of life and/or intelligence, therefore eliminating the need for any questionable assumptions and even for the…
In this article I chronicle a series of landmark events, with which I was personally involved, that relate to the development of the theory of cosmic life. The interpretation of events offered here might invite a sense of incredulity on the…
A general sketch of how the problem of space dimensionality depends on Anthropic arguments is presented. A new argument in favor of a stable scenario for space dimensionality for a time scale longer than that required for the existence of…
We discuss the Carter's formula about the mankind evolution probability following the derivation proposed by Barrow and Tipler. We stress the relation between the existence of billions of galaxies and the evolution of at least one…
The oft-repeated claim that life is written into the laws of nature are examined and criticized. Arguments are given in favour of life spreading between near-neighbour planets in rocky impact ejecta (transpermia), but against panspermia,…
High-energy astrophysical events that cause galaxy-scale extinctions have been proposed as a way to explain or mollify the Fermi Paradox, by making the universe at earlier times more dangerous for evolving life, and reducing its present-day…
The existence of intelligent, interstellar traveling and colonising life is a key assumption behind the Fermi Paradox. Until recently, detecting signs of life elsewhere has been so technically challenging as to seem almost impossible.…
Despite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary…
The fact that life has evolved in our universe constrains the laws of physics. The anthropic principle proposes that these constraints are sometimes very tight and can be used to explain in a sense the corresponding laws. Recently a…
The Great Filter interpretation of Fermi's great silence asserts that $Npq$ is not a very large number, where $N$ is the number of potentially life-supporting planets in the observable universe, $p$ is the probability that a randomly chosen…
A series of astronomical observations obtained over the period 1986 to 2018 supports the idea that life is a cosmic rather than a purely terrestrial or planetary phenomenon. These include (1) the detection of biologically relevant molecules…
It is argued that all notions associated with the origin of life should be related with the participatory anthropic principle of Wheeler and must be extended into the realm of the multiverse. Also discussed is the notion that life can only…
The existence of life is one of the most fundamental problems of astrophysics. The intriguing existence of progressively complex and apparently improbable living beings should be a general tendency of life in the Universe. We are looking…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations through which the fundamental laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergence of…
It is sometimes asserted that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. We critically examine the assumptions inherent in this argument. Using a lottery model for biogenesis in the Universe, we…
The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high {\em ex ante} probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be…