Universal Perfection

To be fair to Mike, most Physicists would agree that the universe does seem to be tuned for life. Most ways in which we might conceive of the universe being different would result in a universe in which no life at all was possible.However, the question about whether these concievable universes are posible has yet to be answered.

What do you mean by a 'life bowl', or indeed an 'unbalanced life bowl'? I've never heard the term.

It's not a tautology, blow up any bit of dynamite and you'll get much the same exlosion, but swap the dynamite for jelly (jello to our American friends, I believe) and nothing much will happen. But whether it has any significance depends on why the universe is such that it is. Since we have no current explanation they can try the god of the gaps card.

Mostly they're to do with the fundemental constants that 'control' the various forces that hold matter together. There's only a very narrow band in which matter will form, a narrower band still in which matter will be stable, a narrower band of gravitional force strength in which planets will form.The trouble with this all is that we have no real reason to believe these constants are arbitary and could have different values. While our current physical knowledge doesn't explain them, future explanations may. In the same way Kepler's laws described planetary motion, and Newton's laws explained why they followed those paths.

They don't make it clearer, they make it less so.It says next to your post who's writing it, so anything that is unattributed is assumed to be from you, and anything quoted to be a reply to the message your message is listed as being a reply to. By not conforming to the quoting standards of this Forum, you make your post harder to read and yourself look bad.Please desist.{I agree with Mr Jack - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 11-03-2003]

Crash, silicon lacks all of the properties that make Carbon suitable for life, so why are you singling it out as a likely alternate life candidate? While Lawki is almost certainly not the only life that can be (as we are increasingly discovering; hyperthermophiles and all that), I fail to see why you consider Silicon a viable candidate?

Yes, and no.No - When Hyperthermophiles were first discovered, they were a big shock to the biological community, no-one had any idea that life like that could exist. They work on energy channels fundamentally different to those in the everyday life we see around us, they can survive in conditions previously thought to be fatal to all forms of life.Yes - They are carbon based, they do use DNA/RNA, and have many other similarities. So, as you correctly state, we are cousins.I was not suggesting that they represented a complete non-LAWKI, but they do demonstrate that life can exist in very different ways to originally suspected. Hyperthermophiles could live on a great many more planets that more 'traditional' organisms.-Edit-: Also note that, by definition, all life we know about is LAWKI.[This message has been edited by Mr Jack, 11-05-2003]