#coin

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics". To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life. ↗

— Paul Davies

#chance #coincidence #fine-tuning #fred-hoyle #id

Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits and coughs and starts and random collisions. ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#coincidence #random

I don't think it's any coincidence that I lost my religious faith and 'manned up' in the same year. I was described somewhere as a lapsed Catholic, which is funny because I'm not going back! I want to achieve things rather than live life in an animalistic way. ↗

— Jimmy Carr

#animalistic #any #back #because #catholic

Whether I sound like Sammy or not is purely coincidence. You have got to hand it to him, he sings his ass off. There is no moss on that stone. ↗

— Gary Cherone

#coincidence #got #hand #him #his

In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury. ↗

— Harlan Coben

#fury #happen #life #novels #real

The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own. ↗

— Alistair Cooke

#best #child #coincide #come #compliment

It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. ↗

— Henry A. Wallace

#case #coincidence #every #growth #heralded

Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people's minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide. ↗

— Barbara Deming

#coincide #enemy #minds #most #people

The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence. ↗

— Friedrich Durrenmatt

#coincidence #possible #programmed #turn #worst

My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere. ↗

— Anthony Trollope

#hemisphere #me #more #sweetheart #than