We exist.

What can that fact teach us about the

Universe?
medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/we-exist-what-can-that-fact-teach-us-about-the-universe-fdae9463a996

August 25, 2022

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Ethan Siegel
Aug 25

9 min read

(: NASA/NEXSS collaboration)

The anthropic principle has fascinating scientific uses, where the

simple fact of our existence holds deep physical lessons. Don’t
abuse it!

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For thousands of years, humans have pondered the meaning of our existence. From
philosophers who debated whether their minds could be trusted to provide accurate
interpretations of our reality to physicists who’ve attempted to interpret the weirder
aspects of quantum physics and relativity, we’ve learned that some aspects of our
Universe appear to be objectively true for everyone, while others are dependent on the
actions and properties of the observer.

Although the scientific process, combined with our experiments and observations, have
uncovered many of the fundamental physical laws and entities that govern our Universe,
there’s still much that remains unknown. However, just as Descartes was able to reason,
“I think, therefore I am,” the fact of our existence — the fact that “we are” — has inevitable
physical consequences for the Universe as well. Here’s what the simple fact that we exist
can teach us about the nature of our reality.

(: T. Pyle/Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab)

To start with, the Universe has a set of governing rules, and we’ve been able to make some
sense of at least some of them. We understand how gravity works at a continuous, non-
quantum level: by matter and energy curving spacetime and by that curved spacetime
dictating how matter and energy move through it. We know a large portion of the
particles that exist (from the Standard Model) and how they interact through the three
other fundamental forces, including at the quantum level. And we know that we exist,
composed of those very same particles and obeying those same laws of nature.

Based on those facts, physicist Brandon Carter formulated two statements back in 1973
that seem like they must be true:

1. We exist as observers, here and now, within the Universe, and therefore the
Universe is compatible with our existence at this particular location in spacetime.

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 2. And that our Universe — including the fundamental parameters which it depends on
— must exist in such a way that observers such as ourselves could exist within it at
some point.

These two statements are known, today, as the Weak Anthropic Principle and the Strong
Anthropic Principle, respectively. When used properly, they can enable us to draw
incredibly powerful conclusions and constraints about what our Universe is like.

(: Contemporary Physics Education Project/DOE/SNF/LBNL)

Think about these facts, all together. The Universe has parameters, constants, and laws
that govern it. We exist within this Universe. Therefore, the sum total of everything that
determines how the Universe works must be allow for creatures like us to come into
existence within it.

This seems like a set of simple, self-evident facts. If the Universe were such that it was
physically impossible for creatures like us to exist, then we would never have come into
existence. If the Universe had properties that were incompatible with any form of
intelligent life existing, then no observers like us could have come into existence.

But we are here. We exist. And therefore, our Universe does exist with such properties
that an intelligent observer could have possibly evolved within it. The fact that we are here
and that we actively engage in the act of observing the Universe implies this: the Universe
is wired in such a way that our existence is possible.

That is the essence of the Anthropic Principle in general.

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 (: ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org))

It doesn’t seem like this statement should be controversial. It also doesn’t seem like it
teaches us very much, at least on the surface. But if we start to look at a variety of physical
puzzles that the Universe has presented to us over the years, we start to see just how
powerful an idea it can be for scientific discovery.

The fact that we are observers made of atoms — and that many of those atoms are carbon
atoms — tells us that the Universe must have created carbon in some fashion. The light
elements, like hydrogen, helium, and their various isotopes, were formed in the early
stages of the Big Bang. The heavier elements are formed in stars of various types
throughout their lives.

But in order to form those heavier elements, there must be some way to form carbon: the
sixth element in the periodic table. Carbon, in its most common form, has 6 protons and 6
neutrons in its nucleus. If it’s formed in stars, there must be some way to form it from the
other elements that already exist in stars: elements like hydrogen and helium.
Unfortunately, the numbers didn’t work out.

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 (: Wikimedia Commons/KelvinSong)

We know the mass of carbon-12, and the masses of the helium and hydrogen nuclei that
are so abundant in the stars. The easiest way to get there would be to take three
independent helium-4 nuclei and fuse them all together simultaneously. Helium-4 has
two protons and two neutrons in its nucleus, so it’s easy to imagine that fusing three of
them together would give you carbon-12, and hence could create the carbon we need in
our Universe.

But three helium nuclei, combined, are too massive to efficiently produce carbon-12.
When two helium-4 nuclei fuse together, they produce beryllium-8 for just ~10^–16 s,
before it decays back to two helium nuclei. Although occasionally a third helium-4
nucleus could get in there if the temperatures are high enough, the energies are all wrong
for producing carbon-12; there’s too much energy. The reaction just wouldn’t give us
enough of the carbon our Universe needs.

Fortunately, physicist Fred Hoyle understood how the anthropic principle worked, and
realized that the Universe needed a pathway to make carbon from helium. He theorized
that if there were an excited state of the carbon-12 nucleus, at a higher energy that was
closer to the rest mass of three helium-4 nuclei combined, the reaction could occur. This
nuclear state, known as the Hoyle State, was discovered just five years later by nuclear
physicist Willie Fowler, who also discovered the triple-alpha process that formed it, just
as Hoyle predicted.

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 (: E. Siegel/Beyond the Galaxy)

Another time the anthropic principle was successfully applied was to the puzzle of
understanding what the vacuum energy of the Universe is. In quantum field theory, you
can try to calculate what the energy of empty space is: known as the zero-point energy of
space. If you were to remove all the particles and external fields from a region of space —
no masses, no charges, no light, no radiation, no gravitational waves, no curved
spacetime, etc. — you’d be left with empty space.

But that empty space would still contain the laws of physics in them, which means that it
would still contain the fluctuating quantum fields that exist everywhere throughout the
Universe. If we try and calculate what the energy density of that empty space is, we get an
absurd value that’s far too high: so large that it would cause the Universe to have
recollapsed just a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Clearly, the answer we get
from doing that calculation is wrong.

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 (: Derek Leinweber)

So what’s the right value, then? Although we still don’t know how to calculate it, today,
physicist Stephen Weinberg calculated an upper limit on what it could possibly be back in
1987, making astonishing use of the anthropic principle. The energy of empty space
determines how quickly the Universe expands or contracts, even apart from all the matter
and radiation within it. If that expansion (or contraction) rate is too high, we could never
form life, planets, stars, or even molecules and atoms within the Universe.

If we use the fact that our Universe has galaxies, stars, planets, and even human beings on
one of them, we can place extraordinary limits on how much vacuum energy could
possibly be in the Universe. Weinberg’s 1987 calculation demonstrated that it must be at
least 118 orders of magnitude — that is, a factor of 10¹¹⁸ — smaller than the value
obtained from quantum field theory calculations.

When dark energy was empirically discovered in 1998, we got to measure that number for
the first time: it was 120 orders of magnitude (a factor of 10¹²⁰) smaller than the naïve
prediction. Even without the necessary tools to perform the calculations needed to obtain
the answer, the anthropic principle got us remarkably close.

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 (: University of Cambridge/CTC)

Just two years ago, in 2020,

theoretical physicist John Barrow died, a victim of colon cancer. Back in 1986, he cowrote
a prominent book with Frank Tipler, . In that book, they redefined the anthropic principle
as the following two statements:

1. The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally
probably but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exists sites
where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old
enough for it to have already done so.
2. The Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at
some stage in history.

Although these statements might seem equivalent on the surface to the prior ones, they
add up to something very different. Instead of contending, as Carter originally did, that
“our existence, as observers, means that the Universe’s laws must allow observers to
possibly exist,” we now have “the Universe must allow carbon-based, intelligent life, and
that hypothetical Universes where that life does not develop are not permitted.”

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 (: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/L. Calçada (ESO) & NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team)

This highly influential (and controversial) reframing of the anthropic principle takes us
from demanding that the Universe must not make it impossible for observers to exist,
because we do, to mandating that a Universe where intelligent observers do not arise
cannot be allowed. If that sounds like an enormous leap of faith that is not supported by
either science or reason, you’re not alone. In their book, Barrow and Tipler go even
further, offering the following alternative interpretations of the anthropic princple:

The Universe, as it exists, was designed with the goal of generating and sustaining
observers.
Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being.
An ensemble of Universes with different fundamental laws and constants are
necessary for our Universe to exist.

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Every one of these scenarios might present a fascinating feast for the imagination, but
they all represent incredibly speculative leaps in logic, and make assumptions about
cosmic purpose and the relationship between observers and reality that aren’t necessarily
true.

(: Jaime Salcido/EAGLE Collaboration)

You don’t have to look far to find claims that the anthropic principle does any or all of the
following: supports a multiverse, provides evidence for the string landscape, requires we
have a Jupiter-like gas giant to protect Earth from asteroids, and to explain why Earth is
~26,000 light-years away from the galactic center. In other words, people are misusing
the anthropic principle to argue that the Universe must be the way it is because we exist
with the properties that we have. That’s not only untrue, but it’s not even what the
anthropic principle allows us to conclude.

What’s true is that we do exist, the laws of nature exist, and some of the great cosmic
unknowns can be legitimately constrained by the facts of our existence. In that sense —
and perhaps, in that sense alone — the anthropic principle has scientific value. But as
soon as we start speculating about relationships, causes, or phenomena that we cannot
detect or measure, we leave science behind.

That isn’t to say that such speculations aren’t intellectually interesting, but engaging in
them in no way improves our understanding of the Universe the way that Hoyle’s or
Weinberg’s anthropic predictions did. The simple fact of our existence can guide us
towards understanding what certain parameters that govern our Universe must actually
be, but only if we stick to what’s scientifically measurable, at least in principle.

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