New Study in ‘Science’ Journal Affirms Key Measure of the Universe’s Fine Tuning
It’s not news that a growing number of scientists, philosophers and related advocates point to the Cosmological Constant — the rate at which planets, stars, and other elements of the universe are accelerating away from a central point — as evidence for fine-tuning, or Intelligent Design (ID).
What is news is for one of the most-respected, peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world publishing the results of a new study by an international group of physicists who found what may well be further evidence for ID in this phenomenon. Here’s how Science introduces the study:
“Scientists have known for several years now that stars, galaxies, and almost everything in the universe is moving away from us (and from everything else) at a faster and faster pace. Now, it turns out that the unknown forces behind the rate of this accelerating expansion — a mathematical value called the cosmological constant — may play a previously unexplored role in creating the right conditions for life.
Photo by Kyle Goetsch on Unsplash
“That’s the conclusion of a group of physicists who studied the effects of massive cosmic explosions, called gamma ray bursts, on planets. They found that when it comes to growing life, it’s better to be far away from your neighbors — and the cosmological constant helps thin out the neighborhood.
“‘In dense environments, you have many explosions, and you’re too close to them,’ says cosmologist and theoretical physicist Raul Jimenez of the University of Barcelona in Spain and an author on the new study. ‘It’s best to be in the outskirts, or in regions that have not been highly populated by small galaxies—and that’s exactly where the Milky Way is.’
“Jimenez and his team had previously shown that gamma ray bursts could cause mass extinctions or make planets inhospitable to life by zapping them with radiation and destroying their ozone layer. The bursts channel the radiation into tight beams so powerful that one of them sweeping through a star system could wipe out planets in another galaxy.
“For their latest work, published this month in Physical Review Letters, they wanted to apply those findings on a broader scale and determine what type of universe would be most likely to support life.”
Science explains that Jimenez and his co-workers “used a computer model to run simulations of the universe expanding and accelerating at many different speeds. They then measured how changing the cosmological constant affected the universe’s density, paying particular attention to what that meant about gamma ray bursts raining down radiation on stars and planets.
“As it turns out, our universe seems to get it just about right. The existing cosmological constant means the rate of expansion is large enough that it minimizes planets’ exposure to gamma ray bursts, but small enough to form lots of hydrogen-burning stars around which life can exist.”
These findings aren’t definitive and certainly won’t settle for all time the continuing debate between IDers and scientific materialists. But it’s encouraging to see the findings being seriously presented in a such a respected journal. I just hope the editors of Science are not now subjected to a vicious Cancel Culture assault.
HT: Wintery Knight
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“Cancel Culture” as we call it today, has already existed for decades in the scientific community, with credentialed, and respected creationist and intelligent design scientists being shut down and erased from records and boards and other prestigious scientific organizations once they made their views known (often just for presenting studies that brought parts of evolution into question, without coming to any conclusion of any kind). Those of us paying close attention in the 80s and 90s saw this clearly, and have been aware of it since. It’s only in the last few years that that has spilled over into mainstream society, threw off it’s mask and got a name.
You are exactly right, Gloria, and, even as it was happening in the scientific community, the same process of censorship in the academic communities of political science and related fields made it all but impossible for conservative/non-leftist scholars to teach or publish their work.