On 18 January 2014 19:02, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 1/17/2014 8:17 PM, LizR wrote: > > OK, I withdraw the incredibly. I'm just going by what folks tell me on > this, plus no doubt a natural tendency towards hyperbole. > > So we still have the properties of water and carbon and "god knows what > else". Given the number of elements that don't assemble into chain > molecules, or liquids that don't float when they solidify .... hm .... let > me know if we ever reach the point where incredibleness can legitimately be > invoked, will you? > > > The cosmological constant seemed to be incredibly fine-tuned as a > near-zero remnant of the quantum-vacuum energy density. But the > holographic principle may have solved that. > > Wasn't inflation supposed to fix a similar problem?
I was thinking more of the properties of matter which allow stars and planets and life to exist than the cosmological constant, although that may be very fine tuned too. I must admit that the homogeneity and isotropy of the universe look so smooth above some scale (I think it's around a few 100 million light years) that there is probably something fairly fundamental smoothing it off. Wouldn't we otherwise expect the universe to be drastically non-uniform with us just fortunate enough to be in a "pocket of smoothness" ? (Or maybe it's easier for whatever-it-is to operate on the whole universe, giving us an "unlikely" flat one...???) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
