Goldilocks Universe - 1
Goldilocks, a small girl wandering through the woods comes across a cottage, whose owners “The Three Bears” went for stroll. For the sake of moving the story along, let’s ignore the neglectful behavior of her parents allowing their child to wander alone in the woods and why did “The Three Bears” move from a cave to a nice cottage. Apparently the three bears had custom made furniture. The Papa Bear had a large recliner, the Mother Bear a medium size recliner and the Child Bear a small recliner. This applied to their beds and all the other household items.
Goldilocks made herself at home. She found Papa Bear’s recliner uncomfortable, Mother Bear’s too soft, but Child Bear’s recliner was just right. It turns out that everything made for the Child Bear in this family was “just right” for Goldilocks. On the family table were three bowls of porridge. If you guess that Goldilocks planted herself in the front of the Child’s porridge bowl, you are correct. After enjoying the porridge, she fell asleep in the Child’s “just right” bed. The three bears return to the cottage and awoke Goldilocks from her nap. They were not happy with the intrusion and asked Goldilocks to return to her parents.
The story ends with the three Bears getting a TV commercial contract to advertize Charmin toilet paper and Goldilocks becoming a zoologist specializing in Bears life styles.
In recent times the Goldilocks story is being used as a metaphor and invoked by another group of people called Scientists. They used to believe that Nature was governed by a set of unchangeable physical laws that were etched in stone. This is not true anymore. Advances in Astronomy, Quantum Mechanics and the other Sciences paint a picture that our very existence depends not just on a small number of physical laws but on thousands, possibly millions of “just right” events and developments. The kicker here is that the physical laws and evolutionary events could be very different. If they were different, we and maybe all of life would not exist. There is no scientific explanation or reason why the universe is “just right” for us to be here.
A simple but not obvious example is oxygen and the density of matter in the universe. Oxygen is produced by Stars and the universe’s density of matter is critical to the birth of Stars. If the density of matter in the universe was greater than the current density, post big bang expansion would not continue due to the
forces of too much Gravity and the universe would collapse. On the hand if the density was less than the current density, Stars could not be formed because Gravity would be too week to colapse the dust and gases into Stars. If the universe matter density was not “just right” there would be: No Stars, No Oxygen (and every element we depend on produced by Stars), and No Us.
There are two different narratives that explain the Goldilocks Universe. The first is that God is the Author of our Universe and through science we are trying to discover how God created things “just right”. The second is the Multi Universe Theory (Multiverse) where given a very large number of universes; one universe out of a gazillion is bound to have things “just right”. I subscribe to the first narrative, and have a lot of problems with the second one.
We begin our journey in our own Solar System. Our Sun was born about 5 billion and 30 million years ago. It took about 30 million years for our Sun to be born. It started with a collapsing region (trillions upon trillions miles) of interstellar cloud of hydrogen gas and dust (material elements from Stars that exploded at an earlier time) to form a Stellar Embryo. In the next 100,000 years the Stellar Embryo gains weight by pulling in surrounding material. At about one million years old, the Embryo becomes a Protostar. For the next 10 million years, the Protostar continues to grow larger as its gravity pulls in more surrounding gas and dust. What is not absorbed by the Protostar develops
into spinning disk of gas and matter that is coalescing into planets and asteroids. It will take the Protostar another 20 million years to contract (via gravity) to a point that triggers a hydrogen fusion nuclear reaction. Once the nuclear furnace was lit, our Sun became an active Star and our solar system evolved.
In the next addition of the Goldilocks Universe, we will explore the planets in our solar system and planets discovered by the Kepler Telescope in other solar systems in our Milky Way Galaxy.
Teaser: 68 are earth size planets.
Sources: Michael Albrow, Scientist, Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory
Scientific American Magazine
Goldilocks, a small girl wandering through the woods comes across a cottage, whose owners “The Three Bears” went for stroll. For the sake of moving the story along, let’s ignore the neglectful behavior of her parents allowing their child to wander alone in the woods and why did “The Three Bears” move from a cave to a nice cottage. Apparently the three bears had custom made furniture. The Papa Bear had a large recliner, the Mother Bear a medium size recliner and the Child Bear a small recliner. This applied to their beds and all the other household items.
Goldilocks made herself at home. She found Papa Bear’s recliner uncomfortable, Mother Bear’s too soft, but Child Bear’s recliner was just right. It turns out that everything made for the Child Bear in this family was “just right” for Goldilocks. On the family table were three bowls of porridge. If you guess that Goldilocks planted herself in the front of the Child’s porridge bowl, you are correct. After enjoying the porridge, she fell asleep in the Child’s “just right” bed. The three bears return to the cottage and awoke Goldilocks from her nap. They were not happy with the intrusion and asked Goldilocks to return to her parents.
The story ends with the three Bears getting a TV commercial contract to advertize Charmin toilet paper and Goldilocks becoming a zoologist specializing in Bears life styles.
In recent times the Goldilocks story is being used as a metaphor and invoked by another group of people called Scientists. They used to believe that Nature was governed by a set of unchangeable physical laws that were etched in stone. This is not true anymore. Advances in Astronomy, Quantum Mechanics and the other Sciences paint a picture that our very existence depends not just on a small number of physical laws but on thousands, possibly millions of “just right” events and developments. The kicker here is that the physical laws and evolutionary events could be very different. If they were different, we and maybe all of life would not exist. There is no scientific explanation or reason why the universe is “just right” for us to be here.
A simple but not obvious example is oxygen and the density of matter in the universe. Oxygen is produced by Stars and the universe’s density of matter is critical to the birth of Stars. If the density of matter in the universe was greater than the current density, post big bang expansion would not continue due to the
forces of too much Gravity and the universe would collapse. On the hand if the density was less than the current density, Stars could not be formed because Gravity would be too week to colapse the dust and gases into Stars. If the universe matter density was not “just right” there would be: No Stars, No Oxygen (and every element we depend on produced by Stars), and No Us.
There are two different narratives that explain the Goldilocks Universe. The first is that God is the Author of our Universe and through science we are trying to discover how God created things “just right”. The second is the Multi Universe Theory (Multiverse) where given a very large number of universes; one universe out of a gazillion is bound to have things “just right”. I subscribe to the first narrative, and have a lot of problems with the second one.
We begin our journey in our own Solar System. Our Sun was born about 5 billion and 30 million years ago. It took about 30 million years for our Sun to be born. It started with a collapsing region (trillions upon trillions miles) of interstellar cloud of hydrogen gas and dust (material elements from Stars that exploded at an earlier time) to form a Stellar Embryo. In the next 100,000 years the Stellar Embryo gains weight by pulling in surrounding material. At about one million years old, the Embryo becomes a Protostar. For the next 10 million years, the Protostar continues to grow larger as its gravity pulls in more surrounding gas and dust. What is not absorbed by the Protostar develops
into spinning disk of gas and matter that is coalescing into planets and asteroids. It will take the Protostar another 20 million years to contract (via gravity) to a point that triggers a hydrogen fusion nuclear reaction. Once the nuclear furnace was lit, our Sun became an active Star and our solar system evolved.
In the next addition of the Goldilocks Universe, we will explore the planets in our solar system and planets discovered by the Kepler Telescope in other solar systems in our Milky Way Galaxy.
Teaser: 68 are earth size planets.
Sources: Michael Albrow, Scientist, Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory
Scientific American Magazine