Remarkable

It’s a remarkable fact (to put it mildly) that there are a number (six, according to Sir Martin Rees in Just Six Numbers) of cosmic constants whose value appears to be undetermined by any known physical law, yet were they different – even slightly – we wouldn’t be here (and neither might the planets, stars and galaxies). For example, the value of Є is 0.007. Є defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together, and thus determines how much of the periodic table can exist. If it were 0.006 or 0.008, I wouldn’t be writing this sentence – I wouldn’t be. The most amazing of these is the value of N, the ratio of the force of gravity to the electromagnetic force - 10 to the power 36 . This is huge, but were it a little less, gravity would be overwhelming, preventing the formation of everything we know and love – including ourselves.

It’s a Remarkable Fact that evolution produced even mammals, let alone homo sapiens. Our twig in the Tree of Life depends the myriad offshoots from which it sprang, not to mention freaks accidents in the geologic past. For example, dinosaurs would almost certainly still be roaming the planet, preventing the evolution of the vertebrate lineage from which primates sprung, had not a meteorite (of a certain size) happened to have banged into the earth some 65 million years ago. Stephen Jay Gould famously argued (in Wonderful Life) that were the “tape of life” to be replayed, homo would almost certainly not be one of its tunes.

How do we explain Remarkable Facts? In other words, what do we have to say about the fact that were it not for them, we would not be here, and were it not for most of them, no life would be possible anywhere? We could invoke the Anthropic Principle, which states something like: since the RFs need to be how they are for us to have been able to discover that there are RFs, and we have discovered them, then the RFs are in fact unremarkable. A cop out, right? So what’s the cop in? An important question in part because of its religious possibilities, and in part because there's one more Remarkable Fact to remark on...