相关论文: Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: Fundament…
In a multiverse setting, we expect to be situated in a universe that is exceptionally good at producing life. Though the conditions for what life needs to arise and thrive are currently unknown, many will be tested in the coming decades.…
In a multiverse context, determining the probability of being in our particular universe depends on estimating its overall habitability compared to other universes with different values of the fundamental constants. One of the most…
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by…
Stellar activity and planetary atmospheric properties have the potential to strongly influence habitability. To date, neither have been adequately studied in the multiverse context, so there has been no assessment of how these effects…
How good is our universe at making habitable planets? The answer to this depends on which factors are important for life: Does a planet need to be Earth mass? Does it need to be inside the temperate zone? are systems with hot Jupiters…
We investigate the dependence of elemental abundances on physical constants, and the implications this has for the distribution of complex life for various proposed habitability criteria. We consider three main sources of abundance…
Evidence for fine-tuning of physical parameters suitable for life can perhaps be explained by almost any combination of providence, coincidence or multiverse. A multiverse usually includes parts unobservable to us, but if the theory for it…
The notion that there are many "universes" with different properties is one answer to the question of "why is the universe so hospitable to life?" This notion also naturally follows from current ideas in eternal inflation and string/M…
Do mass extinctions affect the development of intelligence? If so, we may expect to be in a universe that is exceptionally placid. We consider the effects of impacts, supervolcanoes, global glaciations, and nearby gamma ray bursts, and how…
Motivated by the possibility that different versions of the laws of physics could be realized within other universes, this paper delineates the galactic parameters that allow for habitable planets and revisits constraints on the amplitude…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
A quantum theory of the universe consists of a theory of its quantum dynamics and a theory of its quantum state The theory predicts quantum multiverses in the form of decoherent sets of alternative histories describing the evolution of the…
The relative abundances of exotic environments provides us with (uninformed) bounds on the habitability of those environments relative to our own, on the basis that our presence here is not too atypical. For instance, since red stars…
The actual existence of collections of universes -- multiverses -- is strongly suggested by leading approaches to quantum cosmology, and has been proposed earlier as an attractive way to explain the apparent fine-tuned character of our…
In this paper we work out a multiverse scenario whose physical characteristics enable us to advance the following the conjecture that whereas the physics of particles and fields is confined to live in the realm of the whole multiverse…
This paper develops constraints on the values of the fundamental constants that allow universes to be habitable. We focus on the fine structure constant $\alpha$ and the gravitational structure constant $\alpha_G$, and find the region in…
The possibility of fundamental theories with very many ground states, each with different physical parameters, changes the way that we approach the major questions of particle physics. Most importantly, it raises the possibility that these…
There is a deep cosmological mystery: although dependent on very different underlying physics, the timescales of structure formation, of galaxy cooling (both radiatively and against the CMB), and of vacuum domination do not differ by many…
The fundamental laws and constants of our universe seem to be finely tuned for life. The various multiverse hypotheses are popular explanations for the fine tuning. This paper reviews the four main suggestions on inference in the presence…
The physical processes that determine the properties of our everyday world, and of the wider cosmos, are determined by some key numbers: the 'constants' of micro-physics and the parameters that describe the expanding universe in which we…