When we observe the universe, it is hard to imagine that all the planets, stars, galaxies and life on our earth are accidental. On the scale we can observe, all regions of the universe follow the same law: they have the same basic constants, the same particles and the same interaction mode, which inevitably leads to the combination of all particles in the same way, which not only helps to form everything we know, but also leads to the inevitable existence of everything at present.
It is an established fact that our universe looks very beautiful and harmonious today, but does it really have to be what it is today? Let's talk about whether anthropomorphic cosmology with strong subjective consciousness is scientific and what can it bring us?
The anthropic principle can be used as a guiding light for science.
When it comes to the universe, the first thing we can think of is that the universe is full of matter. This is a wonderful thing in itself, because the universe doesn't need this at all, and it can have nothing.
Our natural laws, that is, the physical laws that control the interaction of every particle in the universe, seem to be the same everywhere. We know how the four basic forces affect all the known particles in the universe, and we have a theoretical framework (standard model) to understand how the universe evolved into what we see today.
Knowing the laws of physics and how all different particles interact doesn't answer our questions about. Existence? All the questions. However, the laws of physics can also tell us a lot: for example, through theory, we can know how a physical system works. Given the initial conditions of a physical system and the laws that control all particles, we can know what will happen in the future under the limit of physical predictability. This is the predictability of science.
Space-time will expand or contract and bend according to the matter and energy it contains. Particles attract, repel or combine with each other according to the conditions of their interaction. Some systems are very stable; But some systems will decline after a long enough time. Science can tell us how things happen in the universe and how they will develop in the future.
But sometimes science will face a dead end, and some theories are always hidden behind the darkness. How can I find it? If we want to improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe, we need some guidance and guiding lights. If we have a guiding principle, it will tell us what to seek, which will be of great help in solving scientific problems.
For example, we have long known that there are various elements in the universe, or atoms with different proton numbers in the nucleus. There are at least 59 different elements in your body, but for a long time we didn't know how these elements came from.
But we can be sure of one thing: we do exist and can observe the universe.
This simple, seemingly meaningless fact actually carries a lot of weight. It tells us that our universe has such a property that it allows an intelligent observer to evolve in it.
This is in stark contrast to the existence of the universe and intelligent life. Don't understand? This is actually a simple logic: if the nature of our universe prohibits the formation of intelligent life, then we humans will not exist and no one will observe the universe. The simple fact is that we do exist here and observe the universe, and the universe allows us to exist in a certain way. This is the essence of the so-called anthropic principle.
The anthropic principle can actually teach us a lot.
If our universe is full of heavy elements, there must be some way to synthesize them! By the early 1950s, it was generally believed that stars were powered by nuclear fusion, and our sun changed hydrogen into helium for a long time. But these are the two lightest elements in the universe! We can't combine hydrogen and helium with mass of 1 into heavier elements, because there is no stable nucleus with mass of 5, and we can't combine two helium, because beryllium -8 with almost the same helium mass is unstable, and it will decay back to two helium in the time scale of 10- 16 seconds.
But in 1952, Fred? Huo Yier inferred from the anthropic principle that there must be a process that can produce heavier elements. He concluded that there must be a way to let the third helium enter it, interact with highly unstable beryllium 8 and fuse together to produce carbon 12. The problem is that the quality varies greatly! The mass of carbon-12 is much lower than the sum of the masses of beryllium -8 and helium -4, so he made an amazing prediction: carbon-12 must have an excited state, which nuclear physicists have not discovered, and its mass is exactly equivalent to the mass of three helium -4 nuclei.
This is an incredibly bold prediction, openly challenging the known nuclear physics, because at that time, the excited state of this carbon core was not discovered by experiments. Huo Yier told nuclear physicist Willie? Fowler's prediction and the necessity of this state made the universe have carbon and life. In view of this, Fowler began to look for this kind of excited carbon nucleus. Five years later, the theoretical discovery of Huo Yier countries and the formation mechanism of Huo Yier countries (three alpha process) were confirmed. Later that year, the two of them and Jeffrey, Margaret? Burbage published a paper together, which correctly explained the origin of all heavy elements in the universe: the core of a superstar became a supernova, enriching the heavy elements in the universe!
In this respect, the anthropic principle helps us to understand why the attributes of the universe must be within a certain range, because only in this way can life exist and human beings appear, and we need such a universe.
And according to the anthropic principle, we can even know that gravity can't be much stronger than it is now, otherwise the universe will only be full of black holes. Dark energy (or cosmological constant) cannot exceed 100 times of its observed value, so the universe will expand too fast to form any stars and planets. There must be a basic matter/antimatter asymmetry in the universe, because if not, there won't be enough? Does it matter? To create the universe as we know it.
Although there are many variants of the principle of human nature, the scientific expression is:
The laws of nature must be such that the universe can exist in a way consistent with what is observed.
As far as the anthropic principle itself is concerned, it is not a scientific answer to any question.
We know that there is matter/antimatter asymmetry in the universe, and the universe must have more matter than antimatter to meet the conditions of anthropic constraints, but the anthropic principle cannot tell us why there is matter in the universe that we observe instead of antimatter.
Any kind of scientific reasoning is only useful if it solves some problems that we don't know at present. We already know that we live in this universe, and it has the properties we have observed. Say? The universe must be like this, because we are here? This is both a logical fallacy and has not taught us any new knowledge. The universe may be well adjusted to some extent, but the anthropic principle will not tell us why or how the universe is adjusted.
So the anthropic principle is not a sufficient scientific theory, and it can't tell us the answer to why it happened. But it can guide our science to a certain extent, but it can't be used as the answer to science.