The tuning fork

A lot of people make a lot of the fact that the universe appears to be fine-tuned for life. There's a name for this angst: the anthropic principle. It states that if any of various physical parameters had been even very slightly different then living organisms would not have arisen and no observers like us could have existed in the universe. The extreme improbability that so many variables would align so auspiciously in our favour merely by chance has led some to suggest... but more of that in a moment.

"The Earth is a very special place," says Sujan Dasgupta, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore. He's speaking to ET about the uniqueness of our home planet. He adds it has plate tectonics that recycles carbon, a moon that stabilises spin, a magnetic field that shields the surface from radiation and giant planets outside which protect it from celestial impacts. Like what can you say except that the Earth seems to be, well, pretty well fine-tuned too.

So's life. And evolution. A giraffe's neck is long because only those giraffe's that had a slightly longer neck to begin with who could reach slightly higher leaves and get slightly more nutrition got naturally selected to survive. And the same simple rule applied to their children's children's children. Which is why we're exactly like what we are today - excruciatingly fine-tuned to a turn.

Some people think this points in the direction of a finely tuning creator. To other, it seems the universe has no choice but to cradle life and then defer to its overarching dominion.