be a real hoot if the little green men , after being taken to our leader ask,” Why do you not believe in God? We didn’t get prophets and messengers or even a visit from God himself and we ALL believe ,100% of us, It is so evident. Why are earth’s inhabitants so unfaithful.????”
would that be a blast.
The Ancient Guardian was standing in Rodney McKay's private lab located deep inside the great floating city of Atlantis. She and McKay were busy having a lively discussion about the origin and structure of the physical universe.
"Rodney, that is circular reasoning. Look, show me your Standard Model again. The gauge-symmetric coupled equation, the one that describes the dynamics of a physical system."
"Okay." Using swift finger motions McKay re-shuffled the diagrams on the imaging table.
"There, I give you the Standard Model of physics, Lagrangian style."
The female alien had her elbows propped on the glass table alongside him. "Nice. Now stop for a second. I still haven't mastered your mathematical notation yet, but just get up and take a step back with me." They did. She gestured at the table. "Just look at that, it's beauty, the compactness, the elegance."
Rodney nodded, "Yeah, there's a sublime beauty to it. It's marvelous how the motions and energies of the entire physical universe can all be represented by just five coupled sets of gauge invariant symmetric terms."
"Which set of terms is which? I'm still not fully familiar with your people's mathematical symbology."
"I know, it's a pain how mathematicians use so many different symbols all the time. Okay, let's see.." He bent over the table as she leaned in closely behind him to watch. "The Lagrangian symmetries in the Standard Model are described by five basic groups of terms, starting at the top: 1) the kinetic energies and self-interactions of the gauge bosons, 2) the kinetic energies and the electroweak interactions of the fermions - quarks and leptons, 3) the masses of the W+/-, Z, gamma, and Higgs particles and their couplings, 4) the interactions between quarks and gluons, and finally 5) the fermion masses and their couplings to the Higgs boson."
"So that means this constant here, excuse me." She was leaning in past him, her arm reaching over his shoulder to point at the table. "This one, I assume it is the coupling constant for electromagnetism?"
"Yep, that is the fine structure constant, dimensionless, the coupling constant for electromagnetism expressed in Planck units, about 1/137."
"Ah." She turned her head. "So tell me, Rodney, why is the fine structure constant that particular value? 1/137? Why not some other value?"
He shrugged. "Well, I dunno. It just is. It's a basic constant."
"And if it was slightly different?"
"Stellar fusion wouldn't work. If the value was a tiny bit smaller there would be no fusion, no stars, no suns. If it was a tiny bit larger stars would ignite too soon and burn so furiously that they would never grow in size to produce anything beyond helium so there would be no other physical elements. It would mess up everything."
"Basically the universe wouldn't work right."
"Yeah. It would be either perpetually dark or go up like a firecracker."
She leaned in over him again. "And this constant here?" She pointed.
He looked at it, then turned back over his shoulder to her. "The proton to electron mass ratio."
"And if that one was different?"
"You wouldn't get stable atoms because they'd either fly apart or collapse into neutrons, and the universe would be a goop of either all ions or all neutrons with no interesting macrostructure. Pretty boring either way."
She beamed at him. "Very good, Rodney. You just said something profound."
"Uh, I did?"
"Yes. If any of those constants were just slightly off the Universe would be, as you say, boring. And yet we know the Universe is emphatically not boring. It is full of all sorts of interesting things.."
He chuckled, "Like floating city-spaceships?"
".. like life."
He nodded, "Right, right, right. But I'm still not buying it. You're saying the universe is designed for life?"
"Rodney, isn't it obvious? Look around you. Look at your planet. Look at the physical processes that created it, and you. They are all determined by these five basic groups of terms that feature a dozen or so dimensionless constants that are completely arbitrary, any of which if even slightly different would have prevented the creation of an interesting universe, including one with a city-spaceship with Rodney McKay inside it."
"Oh bosh. I know there's a name for this.. trying to remember.. the Anthropic Principle. That explains it."
"Anthropic Principle? Let me look that up."
Her bright azure eyes rapidly scanned the reference material as the web pages scrolled past on a disc of glowing light that floated just above her extended arm. After a few seconds she said. "I see. Rodney, that's the same circular reasoning you used before."
"Hey, it's a perfectly valid objection to your claim. The universe is made just so, yes, in order for interesting structures to exist in it, yes, with a very unlikely set of initial conditions, yes. Why? Because it has to! Because otherwise the universe would be boring with no life, nothing interesting, and you and I would not be having this discussion."
"Rodney, my people realized very early that the universe is indeed designed to work the way it does. To be interesting, I mean. It's not random. There is so much evidence for it, it's overwhelming. It's embedded even in the equations themselves, how they work, and more importantly why they work."
What makes things not boring is free will...
...but often it comes as one Hell of a price!