![]() It represents the probability that an electron will emit a photon as it moves along its trajectory. The fine structure constant (alpha = 1/137 or 0.007297351) is an important constant of nature. A review of Feyman diagrams, propagators and vertex diagrams. But string theory's multiverse allows such a mind boggling number of different universes with different physical laws that when we ask "Why do we live in a universe so perfectly tailored to allow us to exist?" then the answer becomes "Because obviously if we didn't then we wouldn't be asking the question." Why does our planet have liquid water and atmospheric oxygen? Because if not, we'd be dead and never have asked the question in the first place.Īt least that was my understanding of it. ![]() The combination of all these "coincidences" is what Susskind argues gives the APPEARANCE of intelligent design or a benevolent God tuning the dials on our universe. Other anthropic issues are discussed as well: why is our planet in Goldilocks zone, why are we so lucky to have a large moon to stabilize our rotation, why are we so lucky to have Jupiter sweeping up our solar system's debris, why is the life of proton so remarkably stable, why is the gauge constant exactly where it needs to be to enable chemistry to happen, and on and on. Like if the digits of Pi started repeating your phone number after a billion decimal places. I just understood the more surface level explanation of the weirdness of something that appears to be zero for 119 digits suddenly not being zero anymore. Why exactly this means our universe is "fine-tuned" for us to live in.I'm not exactly sure. But better and better measurements show that the cosmological constant only appears to be zero.after some 120 decimal places it suddenly is not zero anymore. If it were exactly zero, as Einstein believed, we would live in a "flat" (read: not-curved) universe and everyone would be OK with that. The most interesting parts, for me, were related to the Anthropic Principle and the discussion of the Landscape and Multiverse theories.Īs I understood it the biggest issue was with the cosmological constant he discussed. This book is one of the best physics/cosmology books I've ever read (read 3 times in fact).
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