Anthropic-Principle . ORG
... not exactly the stairway to heaven
The observed structure of the universe occurs in dramatic contrast to the modeled expectation... so many fixed balance points that are commonly or "coincidentally" pointing directly toward carbon-based life indicate that there is some good physical reason for it that is somehow "specially" related to the existence of carbon-based life.
Anyone that wants to talk to me personally can GoTo My Blog.
Other than that, physicists might want to skip down to the middle of this page if you're more interested in some math and hard physics than you are in macroscopic evidence for a biocentric cosmological principle, because the anthropic physics will obviously carry different meanings depending upon which cosmological model is actually in effect. You should then find the rest of what is discussed here to be anything but "fringe science", since Einstein's General Theory is still the most conservative approach to explaining an expanding universe, contrary to popularized cutting-edge hype.
IDist, MICHAEL BEHE:
You look at the mountains around Mount Rushmore, and you can tell that it was not just erosion and plate tectonics and other non-intelligent forces that are responsible for the shapes on that mount. It was a design. It was an intelligent agent who did that.
...intelligent design in biology says we think like Mount Rushmore. That is, we see things that give the strong appearance of design in biology, particularly at the cellular level.
Behe's statement makes for a fine example of how to convolute interpretations of evidence for directed evolution with the false assumption that goal-oriented structuring in nature requires an intelligent agent. Unfortunately, this goes both ways, there is a valid physics question about the apparent and evidenced intrinsic finality of goal-oriented thermodynamic structuring in nature that has nothing to do with god, nor any form of intelligent "designer", but this is rarely, (if ever) recognized by either side of the "debate".
Contrary to popular misconception by both sides, the anthropic principle represents an honest attempt by scientists to explain the structure of our universe from first principles, which is a lot more than one can say about the "uncertainly-rationalized" method of modern science. The AP came about as a result of observations that were made by numerous reputable physicists who were attempting to explain why the constants of nature have the values that they do, dating back to the 19th century. To this day the problem is vexing to science, for example, supersymmetry theories generally predict a cosmological constant that is exactly cancelled by gravity, which is one good reason why the observed reality is known as 'the worst fine-tuning problem in physics'. That's because this particular "anthropic coincidence" provides the only known answer for why the density of the universe is almost exactly balanced, but not quite. It is as if the big bang resulted from an extremely good attempt to produce something purely symmetrical in nature that didn't exactly make it all the way there. It appears that there is an inherent imbalance in the symmetry of the energy which prevents it from making an exact split. The effort was so good though, that we can't even come close to defining a practical *natural* mechanism for deriving even a rough approximation of the infinitesimally small positive cosmological constant, and the lowest-possible-entropy structuring that we ended up with!
Our near-flat universe is the most natural configuration that a big bang will produce via the least action principle, because... [ uncertainty, multiverse, infinities... do not most-naturally go here! ].
The lack of any plausible physics for a natural stability mechanism is the reason why string theorists are leaning more and more toward using anthropic select to choose the correct vacuum from "the landscape" of possible solutions, because they have no more-viable mechanism, since they cannot explain why ours is the most natural configuration that the big bang should produce.
But surely ... the universe is configured to maximize the amount of time that energy can do work.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179604,00.html
Well, intelligent design is just the idea that you can see the effects of an intelligent agent on nature. A quick illustration is Mount Rushmore.
Without breaking this continuity a prediction falls that something other than heat-death must occur in order for energy to be "truly" conserved in an inherently imbalanced universe, otherwise "some" energy will be wasted.
The above logically derived solution is an example of the kind of physics that one would normally expect for an answer to the riddle of the near-flat universe. This is the causality-accountable physics that is missing from science... and it represents one of the major-league cop-outs on first principles by a growing majority of scientists who have generally thrown up their hands at any hope of finding a realistically plausible stability mechanism.
What is not commonly understood by most laymen is what is meant by first principles in context with the Large Numbers Coincidences that originally lead to Brandon Carter's derivation of the anthropic principle as an alternative copernican cosmological extensions. The anthropic principle came about from an honest effort by physicists, like Herman Bondi, Fred Hoyle, Robert Dicke, and Paul Dirac, who kept running up against the same problems that we have today when trying to find a causal explanation for the physical structuring of the universe.
At the conference in Cracow, in 1973, Brandon Carter said that the AP respresents "a line of thought"[ "against exaggerated subservience to the Copernican Principle"] that he believed was "potentially fertile", but that it "needs further development".
It is equally arrogant to assume a purely Copernican Universe as it is to conclude that we are at the center of the universe, because it does not logically follow from the ecobalanced nature of the anthropic coincidences and the large scale observational evidence, that life is as completely insignificant as the Cosmological Principle would demand by extension. Carter called this anti-centrist approach, "dogma, (which in its most extreme form led to the perfect cosmological principle".
For the same reason it is even more arrogant to willfully avoid the implication of specialness by automatically grasping for cutting-edge theoretical speculation in order to lose the implication in an infinite number of possible(?) universes, instead of taking the hard look that is demanded by the physics.
We are NOT Alone
Carter correctly noted that... "our situation is not necessarily central, but it is inevitably privileged to some extent".
This point is critically important to this, because the anthropic principle readily extends to, and cannot be restricted from incuding the bands of every spiral galaxy that evolved within the same "layer/habitable-zone" of conditions, (time and location-wise), as our own galaxy, (in terms of the commonality and continuity in the evolution of the same basic raw materials that were produced by our observed carbon chauvinistic universe). In this case, the principle is "biocentric", meaning that life is more-generally important to the physics of the universe at this particular time in its history, and so it will necessarily be every bit as common to the universe as the physical need for it demands.
In this same scientific context, scientists will ask questions like; I wonder if intelligent life does something that cumulatively affects the physics of the universe that makes it necessary to the process? The implication that we're not here by accident isn't so special if something that intelligent life does makes it cumulatively necessary to the thermodymaic process of the universe, because life will then be as common to the universe as the need for it demands.
If the most accurate cosmological principle is anthropic in nature, then it is highly probable that the connection between the forces of the universe and humans also extends to the evolutionary process of humans and the universe to higher-orders of the same basic structure.
So there should be some identifiable mechanism for this that will prove it.
If you don't knee-jerk react to automatically reject observational evidence for biocentric structuring, then one of the first questions that should come to mind is... What is it that intelligent life does that makes it cumulatively advantageous enough to the physics of the universe that the constants of nature would naturally fall into place in a manner that brings intelligent life into existence at a specific time and location in the history of the universe? This is an honest scientific question that naturally falls out of the implications that biocentric input into the evolutionary process of the universe derives a possible solution to why the forces are constrained in the manner that they are. If the most accurate cosmological principle is biocentric in nature, then the principle is telling us the good physical reason why the forces are constrained in the manner that they are. This science should not be ignored because politics and misplaced perceptions about geocentric arrogance get in the way.
Lee Smolin and others have noted that the structure of our universe is set-up to maximize the production of black holes... 'there isn't a universe that could exist that would create more black holes than this one.'
So it should be no great surprise to find out that black holes and intelligent life are two of only three known or expected sources for creating matter/antimatter pairs, which directly affects the symmetry/flatness of the universe... hmmmmmm...
It has been my honest observation that the creation/evolution debate has conditioned scientists to be extremely leery of implications for anthropic specialness that come with the principle, which extremist creationists constantly "nag at them" with. This was a shocking awakening for my naive self, as the debate is chock full-o-prejudice that is expressed as a preconceived and dishonest slant on how evidence gets interpreted by either side. Neither side seems to have a real clue as a result of the fact that they're also having a culture war, and so many otherwise good scientists go into a strictly preconceived form of denial as soon as they hear the words... "anthropic principle", which are instantly associated with the term, "creationist"... or on another level, "geocentrist".
That is, of course, unless they can somehow lose the implication for "anthropic specialness" in an infinite number of possible universes, and then it's perfectly okay to conditionally admit that scientists do indeed interpret that evidence for anthropic preference really does at least "appear" to exist.
Leonard Susskind very clearly expressed rationale for these observations in his interview with New Scientist concerning his new book, The Cosmic Landscape: String theory and the illusion of intelligent design.
Amanda Gefter:
Leonard Susskind:
Apparently Lenny doesn't know the difference between guided evolution and intelligent design either, but at least he is gutsie' enough to admit that there really is a valid scientific interpretation of the evidence that indicates that we are not here by accident. Few will even honestly ask the obvious question about what good reason might exist for why the implied specialness might be true if you can't lose the rationale for "fine-tuning" in an infinite sea of possible universes?
Lenny said elsewhere that:
'The "appearance" of design is undeniable...'
The typical reaction to this is that scientists are utterly appalled by the false first-impression that they get that this means that the Earth and humans are somehow at the center of the universe, so they will automatically and without hesitation try to find ways to explain-away the implied significance of the life-phenomenon, rather than to take an honest look to see if there might be some good physical reason for it. It has also been my observation that this fear and wrongly perceived disgust for human arrogance may be one good reason why we haven't found a rational explanation for the small postive value of the cosmological constant, since it is our human-intelligence which enables humans to make a direct contribution to vacuum symmetry when we make matter/antimatter pairs from vacuum energy.
The physics contained below indicates that the bottom line is that our failure to recognize this evidence has cost us dearly, and the bottom line is that Leonard Susskind is using the anthropic principle to choose from the landscape because he has no viable stability mechanism to explain fine tuning, so he's giving-up on first principles in order to use anthropic reasoning to choose for him.
... but that's just rediculous, surely, the near-flat configuration of our universe follows the thermodynamic path of least action, so bailing on first principles is nothing but another scientific cop-out from string theorists who *believe* in a infinity of possible universal configurations, with no logical proof for it ever given.
The Big Bang produced numerous principles and laws that have yet to be broken in spite of a lot of projections and theoretical speculation about the eventual and final fate of the usable energy of our expanding universe.
The inevitable "cold-death" of the universe is one of the more obvious projections of an accelerating expanding "entropic" universe, but this conclusion doesn't justify the fact that the extremely small measured positive value of the cosmological constant means the big bang most apparently resulted in a near perfect balance between runaway expansion and gravitational recollapse, which means that the universe is most naturally constrained to maximize time, in order to avoid "cold-death" prior to achieving its anthropically expressed "goal" of maximum entropy.
(**That is, of course, without also assuming that otherwise abnormally accelerated inflationary scenarios play any kind of role in the expansion process, but especially if the vacuum has mass!)
Our universe is naturally constrained to expand homogeneously, which reflects the long-term survival characteristic of bound system that is bent toward using all of its usable energy to do work, rather than to let any energy go to waste. The principle of least action tells us that it is no coincidence that this near-perfectly symmetrical flat configuration is also the most energy-efficient means for dissipating energy, because this means that tendency toward "heat-death" is most economically restricted to achieve the most-even distribution of energy possible via the formation of far-from-equilibrium time-maximizing dissipative-structures, like us. So flatness, in this case, serves as a natural damping mechanism that prevents an otherwise unstable quantum oscillator from evolving inhomogeneously, per the second law of thermodynamics!
Dissipative systems like our universe are not driven by how much and how fast entropy increases, rather our univerese's long-term, survival-oriented, flat-configuration means that the system increases entropy as economically as possible, over the longest possible amount of time, in order that the system's energy sources do not become renered innert prior to enabling the energy-level of the system to realize its maximum potential.
The universe actually expresses a grand scale natural preference toward the most economical form of increasing energy dissemination, so if the arrow of time is telling us that the entropy of our expanding universe increases with every action at an accelerating rate, then the anthropic principle is telling us that structure enables expansion to occur most-homogeneously, via the path of least possible action that can naturally evolve if there is an inherent asymmetry in the energy at the moment of the big bang.
If the arrow of time tells us that the entropy of the universe increases with every action, then the anthropic principle determines that accelerating expansion is constrained in the direction of heat-death in order to maximize entropy
Don't Given Them An Inch
If we do not accept the landscape idea are we stuck with intelligent design?
I doubt that physicists will see it that way. If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent - maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation - I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position. Without any explanation of nature's fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics.
Survival Oriented Thermodynamics
What need for humans?
From the above falls an empirically supported hypothesis that an "entropic" Anthropic Cosmolgical Principle is 'most-natural' in a flat yet expanding universe for self-explanatory reasons, but is there enough justifying evidence that the predominant expansive inclination of our universe also represents the reason that the forces are "tuned" in a manner that produces "sites" where intelligent life can arise and evolve?
Well, let's see...
A ) Is there evidence that human actions "economically" satisfy the second law of thermodynamics by increasing entropy evenly, in a self-regulated manner, over an extended period of time? Yes, of course there is, and there is also a not-so "coincidentally" relevant anthropic balance between the individually runaway extreme tendencies of big business vs. the "green" movement, which together, accomplish just that, but...
B ) Is there evidence that human actions more uniformly increase entropy via a greater variety in the type of contributions that they make than say, a rock resting on the ground... or maybe even a "Dung Beetle"... or what about a, uh, a monkey...? Of course there is also evidence for this too, but that's still not enough "specialness" to justify the kind of thermodynamic favoritism that will get a cosmolgical principle named in our honor, so...
C ) Is there evidence that humans are capable of some higher-level contribution to the process that is relatively uncommon, or "unique" and significant enough in our universe to justify an Entropic Anthropic Cosmological Principle?
Once, again, the answer is yes, becauses humans are by far the most energy-efficient mechanism of only three known sources for isolating the release of enough energy to make real particles from the negative energy of the quantum vacuum, which directly affects the balance of the universe, so it is less probably a coincidence that the "flatness" of the universe is also the most apparently significant of all of the "anthropic coincidences".
The evidence most certainly does support a valid hypothesis for design in nature... in terms of thermodynamic structuring that enables and requires human creation as a means to satisfy a very practical physical need. Empiricism elevates the hypothesis to the status of "theory", since it projects a reproducibly accurate representation of nature that makes verifiable predictions. The entropic interpretation clarifies and completes the anthropic princple with good physical reason for an anthropic constraint on the forces, and this makes the principle more universally applicable. So, the thermodynamic connection justifies our seemingly insignificant human contribution, since the cumulative affect makes the need biocentric requiring that intelligent life be as common in our universe as the cosmological scale need for it demands.
Anthropic Symmetry
The contents of this website offer substatial proof that the Anthropic Cosmological Principle[!] is actually a thermodynamic principle[!] that defines the mechanism that constrains the forces of the universe[!] to an almost perfect balance between diametrically opposing runaway tendencies[!], which produces a grand-scale ecosystematically balanced structure[!] that enables it to evolve with the greatest possible efficiency[!], in one-direction-only[!][!].
It is shown that the anthropic coincidences (precarious... or otherwise) that are common to all of the known anthropic coincidences are actually defining the subtly-tipped balance[!] that's necessary and common to all ecosystems, so that the universally applicable principle is actually biocentric in nature, extending across the universe and bringing the forces to bear on a specific plane of life ...so that a very fine layer of sentience arises within observed biotopes of inhomogeneity[!] that are observed to exist in the large scale structure of our universe.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmforall/sets/435988/
It needs to be made clear that this is not a religous website. The following came about while doing honest physics research, and with no prior knowledge of the use and abuse of the Anthropic Principle in the Great Evolution/Creation debate.
Review the Contents Page before getting discouraged, because there are different levels of explanation that are necessary to relate this in terms that will be of acceptable value to real scientists, as well as your average science nut. Some pages are easier to understand than others, in other words, and it might be easier for some to skip to the easier pages first, because this first page jumps right into some high-(er) physics, and it only gets worse for a while before it gets better. Please bear with me on this, as this is not a simple thing to say in terms that everybody is going to understand, and even the best layman's terms include a significant potential for misinterpretation and even willful ignorance from ideologically biased readers that understand " some " physics.
Dr. Einstein's closed finite universe has remained an interest to science because it is the model that is the most compatible with the spirit of general relativity, because it is "closest at hand", in terms of the theory's most practical application, and that natural rule should be a law written in stone somewhere.
In Einstein's static model, G=0 when there is no matter.
The cosmological constant came about because we do have matter, so in order to get rho>0 out of Einstein's matter-less spacetime structure, you have to condense the matter density from the zero pressure metric, and in doing so the pressure of the vacuum necessarily becomes less than zero, P<0.
It is plainly evident from this that most natural way to create new matter in Einstein's model, ("the most compatible with the spirit of general relativity"), also holds it flat and stable, so any other conclusions that have been made since Einstein abandoned his finite universe without this knowledge, are therefore subject to suspect review!
Theorists don't always get my meaning here, and they automatically think that I'm referring to the quantum vacuum, but that isn't even necessary if in 1917 Dr. Einstein tells Friedmann, DeSitter and "company" that his finite expanding model is NOT unstable, because, like Hoyle's flawed steady-state model, Einsteins universe expands due to continuous particle creation, except that Einstein actually has a built-in mechanism for this!
So where does it go from here if they are unable to disprove Einstein's finite closed spherical universe?
The following indicates that Dirac's negative energy solutions more practically apply to Quantum Theory(!) using Einstein's own original abandoned version of the finite spherical space that is represented by the Friedmann; Robertson-Walker metric, but in order for this to be a complete theory, someone besides me needs to write down the basis of wave functions in this background, including an expansion of the field in corresponding creation and annihilation operators - compute the stress-energy tensor in that background - quantitatively describe the vacua - and then work out the matrix elements of the stress-energy tensor between the vacuum and the one-particle states.
Once some better person than I does that, then it can be quantitatively shown how Dirac's Hole Theory works to hold this model stable and "flat" as the universe expands, because particle creation becomes the mechanism for expansion when the normal distribution of negative energy does not contribute to particle pair creation, which can only occur in this vacuum by way of the condensation of negative pressure energy into isolated depatures from the normal background energy density. This new physics repairs Dirac's Cosmological model and his Large Numbers Hypothesis, as well, which, in-turn, completes and clarifies the Anthropic Principle, which is where Robert Dicke originally got his anthropic coincidence from:
This linked webpage is highly reccommended before novice physicists proceed! Ned Wright has done a beautiful job with this very coherent treatment of Einstein's Static Cosmological Model, and the clearly presented information on his site is necessarily informative as it pertains to the physics on this site:
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmo_constant.html
Dr. Einstein said that his simple model of a closed spherical universe.. "lies nearest at hand" to the 'spirit' of General Relativity, and Occam taught us that convenience, practicallity, and efficiency exist for very good reason, which is why the preferred theory is necessarily held up as the simplist theory that gives the most precise predictions, i.e... the most work with the least effort, and that's as close to "elegant" as the real physical world ever gets.
The two equations,
...are only different if there is a physical meaning to negative mass and negative energy values, where the second equation allows for both positive and negative mass-energy solutions.
The expression arises from the fact that the magnitude^2 of the momentum four-vector is given by,
In the case of a body at rest, p=0, which leads to
The concept of negative mass arises by analogy with electric charges, where the formula for the energy of a relativistic particle,
...derives that a particle with a certain positive energy but no momentum could theoretically have a positive or negative mass.
Paul Dirac thought that these negative mass states were antimatter particles that were hidden away in "Dirac's Sea", but observed anti-particles have positive mass, just like ordinary matter does.
But in Einstein's static cosmological model, the Gaussian curvature of every two-dimensional tangent subspace has the same value at every point, and the four-dimensional space has zero Riemannian curvature, so it is said to be "flat". The "boundary conditions" are directly identified with the distribution of mass-energy, while the negative pressure component produces an "antigravity" affect, so that the normally cumulative gravitational effect is outweighed by the repulsive effect of the negative vacuum pressure. Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler noted that General Relativity requires closure of the geometry in space as a boundary condition on the initial value equations if they are to yield an accurately determined metric.
In General Relativity's most natural universe, the vacuum has negative density when,
In this static state, pressure is proportional to -rho, but pressure is negative in an expanding universe, and so energy density is positive.
The vacuum energy density is less than the matter energy density, but it is still positive, so positive matter density can be obtained locally if you condense energy from this negative pressure vacuum into a fininte region of space, until the energy density over this region equals that of the matter density. This will, in-turn, cause negative pressure to increase, via the rarefaction of Einstein's vacuum energy, so this expanding universe does not run-away, because the increase in "mass-energy" is offset by the increase in negative pressure that results when you make particles from Einstein's negative energy vacuum.
In Einstein's static model, G=0 when there is no matter. The cosmological constant came about because we do have matter, so in order to get rho>0 out of Einstein's matter-less model, you have to condense the matter density from the existing structure, and in doing so the pressure of the vacuum necessarily becomes less than zero, P<0.
Real particle creation necessarily requires that you "solidify" this positive matter density "island" of condensed vacuum energy with a 1.2 MeV photon interaction, which is experimentally verified to make it a "permanent" thing, and so it necessarily requires a greater volume of the vacuum to get enough mass-energy to make-up the matter density of a real particle each time that you make a real or virtual particle, so the volume of the vacuum is currently about 120 orders of magnitude greater than one particle in every volume equal to the Compton wavelength of the particle cubed. As Dirac suspected, this means that the size of the universe is directly proportional to the number of particles in it, because in Einstein's static model if you condense vaccum energy, then you necessarily increase negative energy and pressure, as well, by way of rarefaction, so the vaccum necessarily expands during pair production.
The off-set increase in both mass-energy and negative pressure means that an expanding universe is not unstable, nor will it "run-away", because Dr. Einstein's equation...
... works just fine with vacuum expansion, while at the same time repairing the gravitational flaw in Dirac's Large Numbers Hypothesis when both particles in the pair leave real holes in the vacuum.
The graviational acceleraton is zero if the density of the static vacuum is -0.5*rho(matter) because,
If you condense enough of this vacuum energy over a finite region of space to achieve postive matter-density, then the local increase in mass-energy is immediately offset by the increase in negative pressure that occurs via the rarefying effect that real particle creation has on the vacuum.
That means that created particles have positive mass, regardless of sign, and this resolves a very important failure of particle theory, becuase it explains how and why there is no contradiction with the asymmetry that appears to exist between matter and antimatter. This is the reason that we don't observe nearly as much antimatter as particle theory predicts exists, because the energy that comprises the observed antimatter particles normally exists in a more rarefied state than observed antiparticles do.
The vacuum expands slowly, over time, while the universe is held nearly flat as tension between ordinary matter and the vacuum increases with particle creation, because created particle pairs don't necessarily annihilate. Created electrons, for example, can exist indefinitely if their counterpart antiparticle falls into a black hole.
It is made apparent that a negative energy wave is a gravitational wave that has a positive energy density but negative pressure, so that the wave density is smaller than the matter energy density, (but still positive), having a gravitational effect of positive energy density that's just outweighed by the gravitaional repulsion of negative vacuum pressure. Superposition of these "negative energy waves" will result in a tangible non-zero minimum mass, because their combined density achieves quantized levels of positive pressure and matter density over a finite region of space, but would result in an opposing deconstructive potential, when they aren't overlaping to produce a "self-energy".
'Macroscopically, these look like zero'
- John Archibald Wheeler -
The single most important failure of particle theory has to do with the fact that we do not readily observe nearly as much antimatter as it predicts exists, because antimatter particles are typically very short lived, and they annihilate when they meet up with ordinary matter. No priori distinction gets made between matter and anti-matter since the observed antiparticle has postive mass in spite of its sign. Dirac's, "Sea of Electrons" was dismissed as implausible for this reason, but the opposite sign of all other charges indicates that the asymmetry between the two classes of particles is due to the fact that "antimatter" has negative pressure until it gets condensed into a real particle.
In 1957, Robert Dicke noted that carbon based life can only exist in our universe when the Dirac's Large Numbers Hypothesis is true. Human existence is possible because the constants of the universe, and for planet Earth, lie almost exactly between the spectrum of potential, within certain highly restricted ranges. Dike's observation means that Dirac's Large Numbers Hypothesis is somehow true even though his cosmological model was flawed, but per the above "new" physics, Dirac's hypothesis is valid within the framework of Einstein's static model if the energy of the observed antiparticle exists in a negative energy state, (by way of negative vacuum pressure), until enough vacuum energy is condensed over an isolated region of space to achieve positive gravitational curvature.
This application exposes the causal mechanism for the Anthropic Principle, thereby giving the Strong Anthropic Principle real physical meaning, while removing the weakness that gets it labled as a tautology or a truism. It stands to good reason that repairing Dirac's cosmological model would also repair his large numbers hypothesis, thereby sheding new light on the anthropic principle, and Dirac, (who was known as 'the purist soul in physics', for his "self-honesty"), would expect no less from us, than we should take a hard look at what the math is telling us.
Dirac noted that the number of baryons, (protons plus neutrons), in the universe is equal to the square of the gravitational constant, as well as the square of the age of the universe, (both expressed as dimensionless numbers). From this, Rober Dicke realized that a even a slight change in either of these relationships life could not exist. Stars of the right type for sustaining life supportable planets only can occur during a certain range of ages for the universe. Similarly, stars of the right type only can form for a narrow range of values of the gravitational constant.
Particle theory tells us that there is a partner for every fermion type that has exactly the same mass as its counterpart particle, and the previously discussed, "new" physics, explains this without jumping to the conclusion that particle theory is necessarily flawed because our observations don't seem to support this predicted symmetry. Symmetry is *nearly* preserved if particles that are created from the energy of the vacuum have less density than matter before they are condensed into positive matter-density, virtual particles, which can then become real particles, given enough energy. Negative vacuum energy density is then generally maintained by the negative pressure component, so both virtual and real that are created will increase negative pressure via further rarefaction of the vacuum. The process will affect vacuum expansion while G remains constant, because the increase in mass energy that occurs by way of condensation of vacuum energy, will immediately be offset by the described increase in negative pressure, which necessarily occurs if negative energy particles have negative pressure... until they don't.
The effect on Dirac's Hole Theory is that both the electron as well as the anti-electron will leave real holes in the vacuum. As with electric charge, the normal distribution of negative energy does not contribute to pair creation. Only departures from the normal distribution in a vacuum will isolate enough vacuum energy to produce virtual particle pairs. These pairs can be converted into real particles given enough energy, but they do not have negative pressure if they represent localized departures from the norm.
Outline of Significant Points:
1) The Theory of Everything is produced by an Entropic Interpretation of the Anthropic Principle, where the predominant entropic nature of nature defines the causal mechanism for human evolution.
Humans are entropically favored, in other words, and human evolution is governed by the same mechanism, (asymmetric transitions), that the universe also evolves by.
**Here are a couple of easy examples that I found on the net, but the idea is not new to evolutionary theory, and is further supported in books and citations that are being listed:
The Mechanism for the Entropic Anthropic Principle
An Illustration
2) This thermodynamic process occurs on a grand scale by way of real and virtual particle pair production from the energy of the vacuum, which leaves holes in the vacuum that serve to increase negative pressure.
3) That increases tension between the vacuum and ordinary matter, which will eventually become so great that this "NEAR-Static State" of "Punctuated Equilibrium" will end when our universe "leaps" relatively quickly to a higher order of entropic efficiency, by way of another Big Bang, which naturally projects the characteristics of this universe inherently into the next.
**That defines the causal mechanism for the Anthropic Principle, thereby giving it real causal meaning, while removing the "tautologous" distinction as well as the "circular reasoning" that has haunted it since Robert Dicke first noted that humans can only exist in our universe when Dirac's Large Numbers Hypothesis is true. The universe is constrained by the physics that enables it to evolve.
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2005-02/msg0066986.html
4) Exposes the idea of "SuperGravity" as an idealization, because it proves that asymmetries are "convolved" perpetually forward in time, per the second law of thermodynamics, and so ideas like "SuperSymmetry" and "Singularities", etc... are also exposed for the idealizations that they actually represent.
5) Thereby qualifying the Theory of Everything, per the predictions of Big Bang and Particle theories by way of high-energy thermodynamics, instead of an infinitely dense, singularity, the universe already has volume when a Big Bang occurs, which also eliminates the need for inflation, among "other" things...
**...it also repairs Dirac's Cosmological Model by way of Einstein's own original version of the cosmological constant, while at the same time defining a perpetually evolutionary universe that works by the exact same thermodynamic mechanism that governs human evolution.
6) This reasonably defines a new, perpetually evolutionary universe, whose never-ending unattainable goal is pure symmetry, (absolute equilibrium), which it more nearly achieves each time that it restarts time via the second law of thermodynamics, which, in this case, indicates that inherent asymmetries require that the entropy of the universe always increases by way of evolutionary leaps.
|
Anthropic-Principle.ORG |
| Browse Archives |
island
REFERENCES Dirac, P. A. M. (1937). Nature, 139, 323. Dirac, P. A. M. (1938). Proceedings of the Royal Society, A 165, 199. Eddington, A. S. (1931). Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 27, 15. Eddington, A. S. (1936). Relativity theory of protons and Electrons, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gornitz, Th. (1985). On the Connection of Abstract Quantum Theory and General Relativity. Part 1. The Cosmological Model, Internal Report, Starnberg. Gornitz, Th., and Weizsacker. C. F. v. (1985). De-Sitter representations and the particle concept in an ur-theoretical cosmological model. Hawking, S. W. (1975). Communications in Mathematical Physics, 43, 199. Hellings, R. W., Adams, P. J., Anderson, J. D., Keesey, M. S., Lau, E. L., Standish, E. M., Canuto, V. M. and Goldman, I. (1983). Physical Review Letters, 51, 1609. Misner. C. W., Thorne, K. S., and Wheeler. J. A. (1973). Gravitation, p. 1216, Freeman, San Francisco. Weizsacker, C. F. v. (1971a). The unity of physics, in Quantum Theory and Beyond, T. Bastin, ed., University Press. Cambridge. B. Carter, in IAU Symposium 63: Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Obser-vational Data, ed. by M. Longair (Reidel, 1974). B.J. Carr and M.J. Rees, Nature 278, 605 (1979). J.D. Barrow and F.J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Clarendon, Oxford, 1986). M. Tegmark and M.J. Rees, Ap.J. 499, 526 (1998).
Entropic Principles John D. Barrow; arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9903225, New Astronomy.
"The Entropic Principle"
Hartle-Hawking Wave-Function for Flux Compactifications
Hirosi Ooguri, Cumrun Vafa, Erik Verlinde; arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0502211
Anthropic Reasons for Non-Zero Flatness and Lambda
J.D. Barrow, H.B. Sandvik, J. Magueijo; arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0110497, Phys.Rev. D65 (2002) 123501
Anthropic predictions: the case of the cosmological constant
Alexander Vilenkin; arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0407586, published by the Cambridge University Press
Dirac's hole theory versus quantum field theory
F.A.B. Coutinho, D. Kiang, Y. Nogami and Lauro Tomio; arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0010039
Effects of Dirac's Negative Energy Sea on Quantum Numbers
R. Jackiw; arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9903255
Relevant Discussion Links:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-10/msg0055522.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-10/msg0055961.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-11/msg0056253.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-11/msg0056466.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-11/msg0056478.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-11/msg0056668.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-11/msg0056743.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-11/msg0056773.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-11/msg0056917.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2003-12/msg0057605.html
Other's Links:
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/209/mar31/anthropic.html
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Peacock/Peacock3_5.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/blynds/tmp.html
http://www.encyclopedia4u.com/b/black-hole-thermodynamics.html
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/constants.html
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/
Illustrations:
http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~lwilliam/sota/anth/ghelix.gif
http://www.seds.org/spaceviews/9705/images2/antimatter.jpg
