The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery by Guillermo Gonzalez & Jay Wesley Richards

Author:Guillermo Gonzalez & Jay Wesley Richards
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781596987074
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2004-02-29T16:00:00+00:00

THE FAILURE OF THE COPERNICAN PRINCIPLE

The preceding list of Copernican Principle predictions, by no means exhaustive, has two implications: When we can test the Copernican Principle against the evidence, it tends to fail.29 And when it does not fail, it’s often because it retreats to a position that makes it virtually unfalsifiable. Although we should expect speculative rearguard defenses to continue, the actual evidence still points in a problematic direction for the Copernican Principle: toward a single, expanding, fine-tuned universe with a finite past, which has changed profoundly over time. We not only occupy an exceptional location within that universe, we also occupy a special moment in cosmic history. While we and our environs are not literally the physical center of the universe, we are special in other, much more significant ways. In a sense, we are nestled snugly in the “center” of the universe not in a trivial spatial sense but with respect to habitability and measurability. This fact stands in stark contrast to expectations nurtured by the Copernican Principle.

In addition, these findings cast a different light on the general narrative of discovery from Copernicus to the present. The existence of other planets, stars, galaxies, and the like is unambiguous (though limited) support for the Copernican Principle only if these are not at all relevant to our own existence. But as we’ve seen, there’s no reason to assume this. With respect to habitability, our existence depends on such local variables as a large stabilizing moon, plate tectonics, intricate biological and nonbiological feedback, greenhouse effects, a carefully placed circular orbit around the right kind of star, early volatile elements–providing asteroids and comets, and outlying giant planets to protect us from frequent ongoing bombardment by comets. It depends on a Solar System placed carefully in the Galactic Habitable Zone in a large spiral galaxy formed at the right time. It presupposes the earlier explosions of supernovae to provide us with the iron that courses through our veins and the carbon that is the foundation of life. It also depends on a present rarity of such nearby supernovae. Finally, it depends on an exquisitely fine-tuned set of physical laws, parameters, and initial conditions.

But why such a large universe? Why all those other galaxies? Surely our argument breaks down here, one might insist. Don’t the sheer number and size of galaxies imply, despite the narrowness of conditions required for our existence, that we’re simply the lucky recipients of a giant cosmic lottery? In a sense, one could argue that, so far as we know, even our universe is just barely habitable. Some have even concluded that if life is rare in the universe, then the universe is generally “hostile” to life, since it contains so many threats and so few apparently hospitable places. Ignoring for a moment the fine-tuning of laws and constants that constrain the entire universe, and ignoring that such a claim tacitly assumes that the universe exists for no purpose, this conclusion might be plausible. There is certainly a selection

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