Lifeboat Foundation

Simulations show that collisions between moons and planets may be a regular danger for possible extraterrestrial life.

Imagine a universe with extremely strong gravity. Stars would be able to form from very little material. They would be smaller than in our universe and live for a much shorter amount of time. But could life evolve there? It took human life billions of years to evolve on Earth under the pleasantly warm rays from the Sun after all.

Now imagine a universe with extremely weak gravity. Its matter would struggle to clump together to form stars, planets and—ultimately—living beings. It seems we are pretty lucky to have gravity that is just right for life in our universe.

This isn’t just the case for gravity. The values of many forces and particles in the universe, represented by some 30 so-called fundamental constants, all seem to line up perfectly to enable the evolution of intelligent life. But there’s no theory explaining what values the constants should have—we just have to measure them and plug their numbers into our equations to accurately describe the cosmos.

For decades, various physicists have theorized that even the slightest changes in the fundamental laws of nature would make it impossible for life to exist. This idea, also known as the “fine-tuned universe” argument, suggests that the occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physics. Alter any of these values (as the logic goes), and life would not exist, meaning we must be very fortunate to be here.

But can this really be the case, or is it possible that life can emerge under different physical constants, and we just don’t know it? This question was recently tackled by Luke A. Barnes, a postdoctoral researcher at the Sidney Institute for Astronomy (SIA) in Australia. In his book, “A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos,” he and Sydney astrophysics professor Geraint F. Lewis argued that a fine-tuned universe makes sense from a physics standpoint.

The authors also summarized these arguments in an invited contribution paper, which appeared in the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics (1st ed.) In this paper, titled “The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Life,” Barnes explains how “fine-tuning” consists of explaining observations by employing a “suspiciously precise assumption.” This, he argues, has been symptomatic of incomplete theories throughout history and is a common feature of modern cosmology and particle physics.

For decades physicists have been perplexed about why our cosmos appears to have been precisely tuned to foster intelligent life. It is widely thought that if the values of certain physical parameters, such as the masses of elementary particles, were tweaked, even slightly, it would have prevented the formation of the components necessary for life in the universe—including planets, stars, and galaxies. But recent studies, detailed in a new report by the Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, propose that intelligent life could have evolved under drastically different physical conditions. The claim undermines a major argument in support of the existence of a multiverse of parallel universes.

“The tuning required for some of these physical parameters to give rise to life turns out to be less precise than the tuning needed to capture a station on your radio, according to new calculations,” says Miriam Frankel, who authored the FQXi report, which was produced with support from the John Templeton Foundation. “If true, the apparent fine tuning may be an illusion,” Frankel adds.

Over the last few decades, the subject of fine tuning has attracted some of the sharpest minds in physics. By probing the universe’s physical laws and precisely pinning down the values of physical constants—such as the masses of elementary particles and the strengths of forces—physicists have discovered that surprisingly small variations in these values would have rendered the universe lifeless. This led to a puzzle: why are physical conditions seemingly tailored towards human existence?

In a universe with more than a hundred billion billion planets, why have we only found life on one? DEAD SPACE offers a terrifying reason why: gigantic “Brethren Moons” made of meat with an unrelenting hunger for biomass.

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Contrary to common assumption, not all meteorites from the outer solar system contain a lot of water.

Scientists are one step closer to figuring out where Earth’s vast quantities of water come from after disqualifying a class of meteorites drifting around in space since the solar system’s birth 4 1/2 billion years ago, according to a new study published in Nature.

Where did Earth’s water come from?

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Recent research reveals that a peptide called “Nickelback” may have played a huge role in kick-starting life on earth. The substance may also serve as a clue in the long-standing search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Nickelback Peptide Molecule

Continue reading “Nickelback Peptide Molecule Could Have Fostered Life on Earth; Substance May Serve as a Clue in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” »

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A team of Rutgers scientists dedicated to pinpointing the primordial origins of metabolism—a set of core chemical reactions that first powered life on Earth—has identified part of a protein that could provide scientists clues to detecting planets on the verge of producing life.

The research, published in Science Advances, has important implications in the search for extraterrestrial life because it gives researchers a new clue to look for, said Vikas Nanda, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine (CABM) at Rutgers.

Based on laboratory studies, Rutgers scientists say one of the most likely chemical candidates that kickstarted life was a simple peptide with two nickel atoms they are calling “Nickelback” not because it has anything to do with the Canadian rock band, but because its backbone nitrogen atoms bond two critical nickel atoms. A peptide is a constituent of a protein made up of a few elemental building blocks known as amino acids.