![\"Mir](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2018\/09\/768px-Earth__Mir_STS-71.jpg\")
<\/a>(NASA public domain photo)
Mir\u2019s orbital altitude averaged about 223 miles above Earth\u2019s surface.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I now resume my appropriation, for my own nefarious purposes \u2014 focused, as usual, on what I\u2019m reliably informed are the two major themes of this blog (that is to say, on dishonest personal smears of people who don\u2019t share my religious views and on food) \u2014 of material largely drawn from the online \u201cList of Fine-Tuning Parameters\u201d<\/a> compiled by Jay W. Richards<\/a> (though occasionally supplemented with things that I\u2019ve culled from elsewhere).\u00a0 \u00a0This is the fourth of the entries that I\u2019ve taken from Dr. Richards\u2019s list and that are explicitly dependent upon it.\u00a0 The first was this one:\u00a0 \u201cAn initial survey of the \u201cfour fundamental forces\u201d and the \u201ccosmological constant.\u201d\u201d<\/a>). My second was \u201c\u201cInitial Conditions and \u2018Brute Facts.\u2019\u201d<\/a>)\u00a0 And the third was \u201cLocal Planetary Conditions.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n As I said in all three of those blog posts, I claim no originality for these entries.\u00a0 And now, once more, I claim no originality for this one, either.\u00a0 Moreover, although I intend to expand and rework what I\u2019ve begun in this regard, I may never<\/em> claim any originality on the topic.\u00a0 (It\u2019s not, after all, exactly my area of special expertise.)\u00a0 I do, however, intend to eventually rework these notes in successive stages as I draw upon and incorporate materials from other sources for a much larger project that I have in mind).\u00a0 The list from which I\u2019m drawing these posts gives me a helpful outline that I will flesh out and, yes, as time goes on, probably modify \u2014 maybe substantially.<\/p>\n Dr. Richards follows his list of five \u201cCosmic Constants\u201d with a list of four \u201cInitial Conditions and \u2018Brute Facts\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 Those were, respectively, the topics of my previous two entries.\u00a0 The third focused on a few of what he terms \u201c\u201cLocal\u201d Planetary Conditions.\u201d\u00a0 This fourth entry will continue that latter discussion:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Even in a universe that is arguably fine-tuned at the overall or cosmic level, local conditions can and do vary dramatically.\u00a0 Conditions inside a star will be very different from conditions in interstellar or intergalactic space, which will, in turn, be quite different from those inside a black hole and quite distinct from those within a gaseous planet (like Jupiter or Saturn) of a rocky planet like Earth.\u00a0 Life exists on Earth, of course, but Jupiter and Mercury and the asteroid belt are almost certainly lifeless.\u00a0 Even in this fine-tuned universe \u2014 as critics of cosmic fine-tuning delight in pointing out (a point, in fact, to which I will respond at some future time) \u2014 the vast majority<\/em> of places in the universe, to say nothing of space itself, are unsuited for life.<\/p>\n In an interesting book entitled The Privileged Planet<\/em>, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and his co-author, Jay Richards himself, identify twelve broad, widely recognized fine-tuning factors that appear to be required to build a single, habitable planet.\u00a0 (A quite distinct book on a closely related subject \u2014 I own and have read both it and Privileged Planet<\/em> \u2014 is Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe<\/em> [2003], by paleontologist Peter D. Ward and astrophysicist Donald Brownlee, both of the University of Washington.)\u00a0 <\/span>As it happens, every one of the dozen factors listed by Gonzalez and Richards can be found together in the Earth.\u00a0 And there may well be many more such factors. In fact, observes Richards, most of them could reasonably be split out to make sub-factors, since each of them contributes in multiple ways to the habitability of a planet.\u00a0 I discussed several of these required factors in my prior relevant entry, and I will mention three more of them here:<\/p>\n As Richards himself puts it,<\/p>\n This is a very basic list of \u201cingredients\u201d for building a single, habitable planet. At the moment, we have only rough probabilities for most of these items. For instance, we know that less than ten percent of stars even in the Milky Way Galaxy are within the galactic habitable zone. And the likelihood of getting just the right kind of moon by chance is almost certainly very low, though we have no way of calculating just how low. What we can say is that the vast majority of possible locations in the visible universe, even within otherwise habitable galaxies, are incompatible with life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to distinguish this local \u201cfine-tuning\u201d [as] different from cosmic fine-tuning. With cosmic fine-tuning, we\u2019re comparing the actual universe as a whole with other possible but non-actual universes. And though theorists sometimes postulate multiple universes to try to avoid the embarrassment of a fine-tuned universe, we have no direct evidence that other universes exist. When dealing with our local planetary environment, however, we\u2019re comparing it with other known or theoretically possible locations within the actual universe. That means that, given a large enough universe, perhaps you could get these local conditions at least once just by chance (though it would be \u201cchance\u201d tightly constrained by cosmic fine-tuning).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So that may somewhat weaken the argument from \u201clocal fine-tuning\u201d to design.\u00a0 However, Richards and his Privileged Planet <\/em>co-author, the astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzales, take an interesting further step in that book that I\u2019m still weighing:<\/p>\n So does that mean that evidence of local fine-tuning is useless for inferring design? No. Gonzalez and Richards argue that we can still discern a purposeful pattern in local fine-tuning. As it happens, the same cosmic and local conditions, which allow complex observers to exist, also provide the best setting, overall, for scientific discovery. So complex observers will find themselves in the best overall setting for observing. You would expect this if the universe were designed for discovery, but not otherwise. So the fine-tuning of physical constants, cosmic initial conditions, and local conditions for habitability, suggests that the universe is designed not only for complex life, but for scientific discovery as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 I now resume my appropriation, for my own nefarious purposes \u2014 focused, as usual, on what I\u2019m reliably informed are the two major themes of this blog (that is to say, on dishonest personal smears of people who don\u2019t share my religious views and on food) \u2014 of material largely drawn from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":65508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1053,34395,34410,34392,34218,34215,1525,10127,545,8313,34398,34389,1760,34191,34404,34176,34179,4063,34401,34413,5796,34407,34209,34212,6861,32262,29788,34206,34221,14270],"class_list":["post-99009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biology","tag-circular-orbit","tag-co-rotation-circle","tag-cosmic-habitable-age","tag-discovery-institute","tag-donald-brownlee","tag-earth","tag-fine-tuned","tag-fine-tuning","tag-galactic","tag-galactic-center","tag-galactic-habitable-zone","tag-galaxy","tag-guillermo-gonzalez","tag-habitable-planet","tag-jay-richards","tag-jay-w-richards","tag-life","tag-local","tag-local-planetary-conditions","tag-milky-way","tag-milky-way-galaxy","tag-peter-d-ward","tag-peter-ward","tag-privileged-planet","tag-rare-earth","tag-seattle","tag-spiral-arm","tag-university-of-washington","tag-washington"],"yoast_head":"\n\n