Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe (11 page)

Arcane? Bizarre? It’s hard to believe such effects are real. It’s a fantastic result. When quantum physics was in its early days of discovery at the beginning of the last century, even some physicists dismissed the experimental findings as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall Albert Einstein’s reaction to the experiments: “I know this business is free of contradictions, yet in my view it contains a certain unreasonableness.”

It was only with the advent of quantum physics and the fall of objectivity that scientists began to consider again the old question of the possibility of comprehending the world as a form of mind. Einstein, on a walk from The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton
to his home on Mercer Street, illustrated his continued fascination and skepticism about an objective external reality, when he asked Abraham Pais if he really believed that the moon existed only if he looked at it. Since that time, physicists have analyzed and revised their equations in a vain attempt to arrive at a statement of natural laws that in no way depends on the circumstances of the observer. Indeed, Eugene Wigner, one of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, stated that it is “not possible to formulate the laws of [physics] in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness [of the observer].” So when quantum theory implies that consciousness must exist, it tacitly shows that the content of the mind is the ultimate reality, and that only an act of observation can confer shape and form to reality—from a dandelion in a meadow to sun, wind, and rain.

And so, a fourth principle of Biocentrism:

First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness.

Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be separated.

Third Principle of Biocentrism: The behavior of subatomic particles—indeed all particles and objects—is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

Wherever the life is, [the world] bursts into appearance around it.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

 

T
he world appears to be designed for life, not just at the microscopic scale of the atom, but at the level of the universe itself.

Scientists have discovered that the universe has a long list of traits that make it appear as if everything it contains—from atoms to stars—was tailor-made just for us. Many are calling this revelation the “Goldilocks Principle,” because the cosmos is not “too this” or “too that,” but rather “ just right” for life. Others are invoking the principle of “Intelligent Design,” because they believe it’s no accident the cosmos is so ideally suited for us, although the latter label is a Pandora’s box that opens up all manner of arguments for the Bible,
and other topics that are irrelevant here, or worse. By any name, the discovery is causing a huge commotion within the astrophysics community and beyond.

In fact, we are currently in the midst of a great debate in the United States about some of these observations. Most of us probably followed the recent trials over whether intelligent design can be taught as an alternative to evolution in public school biology classes. Proponents claim Darwin’s theory of evolution is exactly that—a theory—and cannot fully explain the origin of all life, which naturally it never claims to do. Indeed, they believe the universe itself is the product of an intelligent force, which most people would simply call God. On the other side are the vast majority of scientists, who believe that natural selection may have a few gaps, but for all intents and purposes is a scientific fact. They and other critics charge that intelligent design is a transparent repackaging of the biblical view of creation and thus violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

It would be nice if the debate changed from the contentious one about exchanging evolution for religion, and switched to the more productive tack of asking whether science can explain why the universe appears to be built for life. Of course, the fact that the cosmos seems exactly balanced and designed for life is just an inescapable scientific observation—not an explanation for why.

At the moment, there are only three explanations for this mystery. One is to say, “God did that,” which explains nothing even if it is true. The second is to invoke the Anthropic Principle’s reasoning, several versions of which strongly support biocentrism, which we shall now examine. The third option is biocentrism pure and simple, nothing else needed.

No matter which logic one adopts, one has to come to terms with the fact that we are living in a very peculiar cosmos.

By the late sixties, it had become clear that if the Big Bang had been just one part in a million more powerful, the cosmos would have blown outward too fast to allow stars and worlds to form. Result: no us. Even more coincidentally, the universe’s four forces and all of its constants are just perfectly set up for atomic interactions,
the existence of atoms and elements, planets, liquid water, and life. Tweak any of them and you never existed.

The constants (and their modern values) include:

Such life-friendly values of physics are built into the universe like the cotton and linen fibers woven into our currency. The gravitational constant is perhaps the most famous, but the fine structure constant is just as critical for life. Called alpha, if it were just 1.1x or more of its present value, fusion would no longer occur in stars. The fine-structure constant gets so much scrutiny because the Big Bang created almost pure hydrogen and helium and almost nothing else. Life needs oxygen and carbon (water alone requires oxygen) but this by itself is not so great a problem because oxygen is created in the cores of stars as an eventual product in nuclear fusion. Carbon is another story. So where did the carbon in our bodies come from? The answer was found a half-century ago, and, of course, involves those factories where all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are manufactured—in the centers of suns. When heavier stars later explode into supernovae, this material is released into their environments, where they are taken up, along with nebulous clouds of interstellar hydrogen, into the stuff that composes the next generation of stars and planets. When this happens in a newly formed generation of stars, these further enrich themselves with an even higher percentage of heavier elements, or metals, and the more massive of these eventually explode. The process repeats. In our own neck of the cosmic woods, our sun is a third-generation star, and its surrounding planets, including all materials comprising the living organisms on Earth, are composed of this nicely enriched, third-generation, complex-material inventory.

For carbon in particular, the key to its existence lies in an odd quirk within the nuclear fusion process itself, the reactions that make the Sun and stars shine. Now, the most common nuclear reaction happens when two extremely fast-moving atomic nuclei or protons collide and fuse to form a heavier element that is usually helium, but can be even heavier, especially as the star ages. Carbon should not be capable of being manufactured by this process because all the intermediate steps from helium to carbon involve highly unstable nuclei. The only way for its creation would be for
three
helium nuclei to collide at the same time. But the likelihood of three helium nuclei
colliding at the identical microsecond, even in the frenzied interiors of stars, are minuscule. It was Fred Hoyle—not of the card rules fame, but the one who championed the steady state theory of an eternal universe until that grand idea’s sad demise in the 1960s—who correctly figured out that something unusual and amazing must be at play in the interior of stars that could vastly increase the odds of this rare three-way collision, and give the universe the abundant carbon found in every living creature. The trick here was a kind of “resonance,” where disparate effects can come together to form something unexpected, the way the wind resonated with the structure of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge more than six decades ago, causing it to sway violently and collapse. Bingo: turns out, carbon has a resonant state at just the correct energy to let stars create it in significant quantities. The carbon resonance, in turn, directly depends on the value of the strong force, which is what glues together everything in each atomic nucleus out to the farthest villages of space-time.

The strong force is still somewhat mysterious, yet is critical to the universe we know. Its influence only extends within the confines of an atom. Indeed, its strength falls off so quickly it’s already anemic at the edges of large atoms. This is why giant atoms such as uranium are so unstable. The outermost protons and neutrons in their nuclei lie at the fringes of the clump, where the strong force retains only a fragile hold, so occasionally one does overcome the otherwise iron-like grip of the strong force and falls off, changing the atom into something else.