ANTHROPIC COINCIDENCES

I have for a long time been fascinated with the odd realization of how special are the circumstances that permit the developement of intelligent life anywhere in the universe.

Below are a list of some of those coincidences, and links to fuller explanations, usually by noted cosmologists and/or physicists, such as Martin Rees, John Gribbin, Steve Hawking, Alan Lightman, George Greenstein, John Barrow, and Frank Tipler.

1.THE BERYLLIUM BOTTLENECK IN THE MAKING OF ELEMENTS

2.NEUTRINOES, THE WEAK INTERACTION, AND SUPERNOVAS

3.THE WEAK FORCE AND HELIUM PRODUCTION

4.DI-PROTONS AND NUCLEAR FORCES

5.NUMBER OF SPATIAL DIMENSIONS

6.ELECTRON/PROTON MASS RATIO

7.STELLAR BALANCE

8.POSSIBLE OBJECTION: SIZE OF THE UNIVERSE

9.SIZE OF UNIVERSE

10. ELECTRON-PROTON CHARGE BALANCE

11.ELECTRON NEUTRON MASS RATIO (1/1837)

12.QUANTIZATION

13.ASYMTOMIC FREEDOM AND THE NUMBER OF QUARK "FLAVORS"

14.NEUTRON/PROTON MASS DIFFERNTIAL

15.ELECTRON EXCITATION AND STELLAR TYPES

All the above owe a debt to, and are directly derived from, Gribbin and Rees' COSMIC COINCIDENCES, Barrow and Tipler's THE COSMIC ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE, Greenstein's THE SYMBIOTIC UNIVERSE, Hawking's BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, among many others. Many feel that the anthropic principle is a thing of little moment, deserving of little explanation. I cannot agree, and I doubt if they would agree, save for the hard questions it brings up about the inevitability of a universe just like ours existing. But I don't want to fill you with my bias. Click on the above and see where it takes you...and see if it doesn't leave you a little more puzzled than when you began.