Zhi-Wei Wang, Samuel L. Braunstein
Dennis Sciama argued that the existence of life depended on many quantities, the fundamental constants, so in a random universe life should be highly unlikely. However, without full knowledge of these constants, his argument implies a universe that would appear to be `intelligently designed.'
Zhi-Wei Wang, Samuel L. Braunstein
Random sampling in high dimensions has successfully been applied to phenomena as diverse as nuclear resonances, neural networks and black hole evaporation. Here we revisit an elegant argument by the British physicist Dennis Sciama, which demonstrated that were our universe random, it would almost certainly have a negligible chance for life. Under plausible assumptions, we show that a random universe can masquerade as `intelligently designed,' with the fundamental constants instead appearing to be fined tuned to be achieve the highest probability for life to occur. For our universe, this mechanism may only require there to be around a dozen currently unknown fundamental constants. We speculate on broader applications for the mechanism we uncover.