Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe Book

Rees is an interesting man - I went to a lecture by him years ago where he explained his theory of the six numbers. Essentially he says that if you were to change a few numbers - the force of gravity, say, or the electric charge - the universe would be completely different. It is interesting that the universe seems to be pretty nicely set up for life to evolve and even little changes in these fundamental numbers would make life as we know it impossible.

I always have problems with this sort of argument. My main problem is that we are clearly here. My next problem is that the religious immediately take talk like this as some sort of confirmation that god was the setter of these constants. It never seems to strike them that if this is the only role their god has, god pity him. If his entire involvement with the universe is turning a few dials thirteen billion years ago and then waiting around - I can only hope he had a few good books to read as all this universe stuff played out.

The point that Rees makes that is very interesting is that there are two answers to the question - why those numbers and not others? One is, "Well, that's just the way it is." Which is pretty unsatisfying. We want more than 'because' as an answer.

Another answer to why those numbers and not others is that there must be some more fundamental necessity for these numbers to be the numbers in which the universe is 'constructed' - that these numbers 'need' to be these numbers for reasons we don't yet understand.

I hope he is right here - that there is a deeper reason we are able to grasp and understand that is just out of reach of us at present. But we have no reason to believe this is the case and that all of these numbers just happened to be the way they are by chance.