Anthropic principle Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
Cosmology
Anthropic principle
Written by: The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
Anthropic principle, in cosmology, any consideration of the structure of the universe, the values of the constants of nature, or the laws of nature that has a bearing upon the existence of life.
Clearly, humanity's very existence shows that the current structure of the universe and the values taken by the constants of nature permit life to exist. Indeed, it appears that many features of the universe that are necessary for the evolution and persistence of life are the results of unusual coincidences between different values of the constants of nature - quantities such as the mass of the electron, the strength of gravity, or the lifetime of the neutron.
The significance, if any, of these coincidences is not understood. What is understood is that, if these quantities were slightly altered, then no form of complexity or life could exist in the universe.
At present, it is not known why the constants of nature take their observed values. Perhaps their values are the only possible ones that they could take; in other words, there may be only one logically possible universe. If so, then it must be judged entirely fortuitous that the combination of values taken by the constants allows the existence of life - or it might be believed that life is so adaptable that it would arise in some form in many possible universes.
However, it is likely that at least some of the constants of nature (and possibly all of them) had their values influenced, or even completely determined, by random fluctuations of quantum mechanical origin in the very early history of the universe. If that was the case, then the constants of nature could have taken different values from those observed, and the probabilities of obtaining different collections of values for them might be calculable.
It is hoped that superstring theories may eventually be able to predict the values of these constants. The predictions may be probabilistic, and there may exist many logically self-consistent superstring theories of the forces of nature, each with different laws and constants of nature. In this case the likelihood of the universe's possessing properties that allow life to exist could be evaluated.
The anthropic perspective is also important in evaluating the predictions of quantum cosmological models that make only probabilistic predictions about the structure of the universe. If, for instance, the models ignored the issue of whether living observers could exist, then they might erroneously conclude that one need only compare the observed universe with the types of universe that a particular theory predicts as being the most probable, instead of comparing the observed universe with a universe that would be the most probable given the condition that it permit life to exist and evolve.
Application of the anthropic principle
In 1952 British astronomer Fred Hoyle first used anthropic reasoning to make a successful prediction about the structure of the carbon nucleus. Carbon is formed by nuclear reactions in stellar interiors that combine three nuclei of helium to make a nucleus of carbon. This three-body reaction is very improbable. In order to reconcile it with the abundance of carbon in the universe, Hoyle predicted that the carbon nucleus must possess an intrinsic energy level at a value almost equal to that of the sum of the three helium energies at the temperature of their combination. Under these circumstances the nuclear reaction proceeds with especial rapidity: it is said to be 'resonant.'
Soon afterward, physicists found an energy level of carbon in precisely the place predicted by Hoyle. Subsequently, it was found that the next nuclear reaction in the chain, the combination of carbon with another helium nucleus to make oxygen, just fails to be resonant by a very narrow margin. If it had also been resonant, then all the carbon needed to promote biochemistry would have been rapidly burned to oxygen.
These coincidences in the relative positions of energy levels in carbon and oxygen nuclei are ultimately determined by complicated combinations of the values of fundamental constants of nature. Were their values slightly different from those observed, then the building blocks of life - elements heavier than helium - would not easily form and persist; life might even be impossible.
The building blocks of life are all made by nuclear interactions in the stars. When stars exhaust their primary sources of nuclear fuel (hydrogen and helium made in the big bang), they explode and disperse these elements into space, where they ultimately are incorporated into dust, planets, and people. This process is long and slow: it takes several billion years.
For this reason, it should come as no surprise that the universe is so large. Since the universe is expanding, it must by necessity be billions of light-years in size if it is to support any complex biochemical life. If the universe were just the size of the Milky Way Galaxy (72,000 light-years across), then it would be little more than a month old - not at all old enough to have produced the building blocks of biochemical complexity. The anthropic principle implies that life could not exist in a universe that was significantly smaller than the observed universe.
Astronomy and Space
The universe expands at a critical rate that divides futures in which it will continue expanding forever from those in which it will one day contract back to a state of increasing density and temperature. Anthropic reasoning shows that if the universe had expanded much faster than the critical rate, then particles of matter would have moved apart from one another so rapidly in the past that no galaxies and stars could have formed.
Conversely, if the universe had expanded much more slowly than the critical rate, it would have imploded before stars, and hence the building blocks of life, could form. In either situation, the universe would probably not have given rise to living observers.
Forms of the anthropic principle
The interpretation of this situation is controversial and has led to many forms of the anthropic principle. The weak anthropic principle (WAP) is the truism that the universe must be found to possess those properties necessary for the existence of observers. The WAP is not a theory of physics. Rather, it is a methodological principle. It is therefore not appropriate to ask if it is testable. If the WAP is ignored, incorrect conclusions will be drawn from the observational evidence.
It was first introduced by the American physicist Robert Dicke in 1957 in response to English physicist Paul Dirac's attempt in 1937 to explain some observed coincidences between the values of different constants of nature by proposing that the strength of gravity decreases as the universe ages. Dicke showed that these coincidences were equivalent to the requirement that humanity lives late enough in the universe's history for carbon to have formed in stars. Dirac's radical proposal was therefore completely unnecessary.
The strong anthropic principle
In 1973 Australian-born English physicist Brandon Carter proposed that the WAP be distinguished from a strong anthropic principle (SAP), which posits that life must exist in the universe. This has been cast as a teleological statement: the universe has been fine-tuned in order to ensure that life arises. Analysis of this statement lies outside the domain of science.
(Alternatively, if all, or even many, possible universes exist or can potentially exist and form a collection of possible universes, each defined by a different permutation of physical constants, then life would have to arise in at least one member of the collection because the visible universe shows that there is at least one life-supporting possibility.)
Some interpretations of quantum mechanics require the admission of an infinite number of possible quantum realities. A participatory anthropic principle (PAP) was proposed by the American physicist John Archibald Wheeler. He suggested that if one takes the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics seriously, one may conclude that, because no phenomenon can be said to exist until it is observed, 'observers' may be necessary to give the universe meaning. This possibility is difficult to evaluate, given the uncertainty in how (or if) quantum mechanics applies to the entire universe.
British physicist John Barrow and American physicist Frank Tipler have proposed a final anthropic principle: the universe is structured so that an infinite number of bits of information can be processed by computers to the future of any time. That is, complexity at a level required to constitute life can continue to exist forever.
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