"The cosmological constant (λ) is finely tuned for life. (#C653)
If the cosmological constant were slightly different (to 120 decimal places 1 2), the universe according to the big bang model could contain neither galaxies nor stars, nor planets, nor life. 3 4 While we do not accept the big bang model, the point is that even with naturalistic models, evolutionists cannot escape the idea of fine tuning.
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Sources
Calle, C. I. (2009). The Universe: Order Without Design. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Notes
- Calle, 2009, p. 156: “Unlikely as these two examples may seem, they both pale in comparison with the improbably balancing act of the tiny value of the cosmological constant. As Leonard Susskind has pointed out, a physicist rather accepts that there is some deep, hidden principle in nature that we haven’t yet discovered and that would make the cosmological constant exactly equal to zero. But the perfect cancellation of 119 decimal places so that, beginning with the 120th place, nonzero values would appear is very hard to understand.” ↩
- Calle, 2009, p. 156: “The experimental discovery of the speeding up of the expansion of the universe 9 billion years after the big bang requires that all the vacuum energy contributions cancel out to 120 decimal places. Cancellation to that accuracy is impossible to comprehend. If we take the total number of sand grains in all the beaches of the world and charge half of them with positive charge and the other half with negative charge so that charge cancels out, producing a neutral pair, this cancellation is only to some 24 decimal places. What if we take the total number of atoms in the world or, better yet, the total number of elementary particles and performed a similar cancellation? That would be to 51 decimal places. Even if we consider the estimated total number of elementary particles in the observable universe, we would get ‘only’ 80 decimal places. A cancellation to 120 decimal places requires extremely delicate fine-tuning!” ↩
- Calle, 2009, p. 159: “The laws of physics together with extremely accurate experimental observations have shown us that the universe is precariously balanced on an edge so sharp that you’d need 120 decimal places to describe its deviation from a perfect edge. Any departure from this value even by one order of magnitude would have prevented the formation of galaxies during the early universe. No galaxies means, of course, no stars and no planets, and therefore, no life. The delicate balance of the laws of physics and the constants of nature seems to indicate that the universe was designed for life. But was it?” ↩
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe ↩