Imagine tweaking a dial on the cosmic control panel—just a fraction to the left or right. A little more gravity, a slightly stronger nuclear force, a marginally different rate of cosmic expansion. In nearly every case, that small adjustment would have meant no galaxies, no stars, no planets—and no us.
That’s the startling reality uncovered by decades of research in cosmology and physics: the universe’s fundamental constants appear to be shockingly precise. The numbers that govern reality are so delicately balanced that even the smallest shift would erase the possibility of life. This strange fact has been called the fine-tuning problem, and it remains one of the greatest puzzles in science.
(more…)