The anthropic principle suggests that the universe’s physical constants and conditions are fine-tuned for the existence of life.
Physicist Paul Davies famously wrote of the problem.
“The cliché that ‘life is balanced on a knife-edge’ is a staggering understatement. No knife in the universe could have an edge that fine.”
He meant that the physical constants that determine the strengths of the forces like gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces are so tightly constrained to such a narrow range that if they were different even by a very small amount, stars, planets, atoms, molecules, and hence life could not exist.
However it is now claimed by theorists, if future direct dark matter searches reveal that dark matter is predominantly not made up of ultralight axions, it would have significant implications for the anthropic principle.
In one online news article the author wrote:
A new paper has set out ways that we can test the anthropic principle, or whether the universe has been “finely tuned” for life. Surprisingly, it may be possible to have answers to this age-old question in a pretty short timescale.
The theoretical research paper will be published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics and a preprint “Fuzzy Axions and Associated Relics” is available on the arXiv.
The paper claims to be able to test the anthropic principle, but really it is a case of the Emperor’s new clothes. By that I mean it sets up a fictitious scenario for the origin of the universe and tests whether or not the existence of another fictitious entity solves the problem of how life came into being in the fictitious universe. The Emperor in this case is the big bang origin of the universe. But it looks like both the Emperor and his new clothes are fictitious.
There are two versions of the anthropic principle, the Weak Anthropic Principle, which states that the universe must allow for observers, and the Strong Anthropic Principle, which suggests that the universe is fine-tuned for life.
Fine tuning means all the physical constants are exactly right such that the universe as we know it results in life. Of course they mean the whole big bang scenario, cosmic evolution, spontaneous abiogenesis of life and subsequent evolution from pond scum to physicists and cosmologists.
The weak anthropic principle is that just because we exist in this universe it is an observer bias, a selection effect. If we weren’t here to observe it we wouldn’t hypothetically think anything special about the universe.
Their idea of testing the strong version is through the detection of a putative ultralight axion. Axions are hypothetical particles from the dark sector of the Extension to the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model does not have any dark matter particles so an Extension is proposed with various putative particles.
Lab experiments are being and have been performed to look for dark matter particles and dark photons from the dark sector but none have been ever found.
I was involved in looking for a paraphoton, also known as a hidden photon or dark photon, a hypothetical particle, which is alleged to be extremely weakly interacting with normal matter. The experiment failed to detect any. (The reality is an exclusion space was established with no detection within a certain mass and mixing parameter space.)
A few years back the neutralino, the lightest stable supersymmetric (SUSY) particle from a version of String theory was ruled out after 10 years of measurements with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. It wasn’t found. That was the end of the WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). And MACHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects) had long been ruled out.
The materialists’ only hope now is an axion, a hypothetical particle first proposed to solve problem with the weak nuclear force CP (charge parity) violation in beta decay. CP violation is crucial for explaining the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. The universe is mostly normal matter, very little anti-matter. The asymmetry points to a Creator. Therefore finding an ultralight axion would amount to finding the materialists’ creator.
From a naturalistic worldview if the properties of axions contribute to the stability and structure of the universe, starting from the alleged early inflation epoch, in a way that enables life, it could reinforce the idea that the universe is finely tuned for life. Finely tuned means not by the Creator but by the laws of physics.
Their tests include astrophysical observations; the proposed detection of primordial gravity waves or surveying supermassive black holes.
The inflation scenario in the early universe that they consider could produce ultralight axions or “fuzzy axions” is completely fictitious.
Yet the presence of high-scale inflation and ultralight axions with a certain mass means that dark matter must be an axion, and with typical big bang initial conditions the universe would end up with too much dark matter causing too many black holes and thus no stars and galaxies. So they would need to depend on the fine tuning of anthropic principle to create a universe that could sustain life.
If the axion is not dark matter, it means the initial conditions to form the universe were extremely unlikely, which can be fixed by the weak anthropic principle especially with a multiverse. That is, we are here because we are in a universe with the correct initial conditions even as extremely unlikely as that might be. The universe is a multiverse with many possible values for various physical constants, and we are in the part of it in which life is possible. So that is not fine tuning, but a form of self-selection.
The materialists begin with the assumption that there is no Creator, so they need to look for a creator of their own making. For them it is a toss up between axionic dark matter or the multiverse.
The big bang theoretical inflationary scenarios only produce a universe like ours if there is the right amount of dark matter that gravitates but is extremely weak at interacting with normal matter and radiation; therefore it does not scatter light. Hence it is invisible. Dark matter particles primarily interact through gravitational forces and have minimal electromagnetic and strong nuclear interactions.
For the materialist no dark matter means you have no stars, galaxies, or black holes. Ironically it now comprises 85% or all the matter in the universe but it goes undetected in any lab experiment.
The axion is their last ditch hope to explain the existence of this universe without the Genesis Creator. It was named after a brand of washing powder (from 1960s), to clean up the CP violation problem in particle physics. Now they want it to clean up this big bang universe creation problem.
If they cannot detect the ultralight axion, meaning it is not primordial dark matter, they don’t know why the universe formed as it did with such incredible fine-tuning, and the anthropic principle fails. The multiverse would need to be the rescue device of last resort.
All this effort to deny the super Intelligent Mind of the Creator God who chose all the physical constants in the universe and created life, setting it in the right location around a stable star where it can thrive. All by purposeful design.
Related Reading
- SUSY is Not the Solution to the Dark Matter Crisis
- Will Antimatter Blow Up the Universe?
- Antimatter Matters for the Big Bang Origin of the Universe
- Cosmology is Not Science!
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