Effects of the Variation of the Parameters of the Standard Model

[Dmitry67]

Hi

I know that our world is quite unstable and minor changes in these parameters could make the existence of life impossible.

However, I am interested in what exactly is going to happen if we start to increase/decrease any of 30 parameters. It is interesting how well-tuned these parameters are.

• Some minor variations can lead to a slightly different universe - say, Lead (Pb) can be unstable while Uranium may become stable. Or, elements are stable or too unstable (then "humankind" in such universe can not develop a nuclear bomb. But there are no unstable elements is the core then they don't decay and Earth core is too cold. No marnetic field around the planet? life is burnt by cosmic rays?)
• Bigger variation can make the number of different nuclei too small to allow the life to develop.
• And even bigger difference can completel destroy everything, like, no stablenuclei, or no fusion in stars, or stars burning too rapidly.

I know it requires too many calculations and if requires knowledge from the different fields of research, but I wonder if there are such researches at all.

 

[neu]

You should think of the parameter values as the initial conditions that define the universe. Of course changing the fine structure constant NOW would turn everything to soup, but it could be the case that a hell of a lot of parameter combinations create a "stable universe", but these other universes are impossible to envisage as they would come about through evolution from different initial conditions.

 

[Dmitry67]

Yes, yes, I meant the variation of the initial parameters ('before' the Big bang, not NOW)

Why do you say 'impossible to envisage'?
We know most of the processes which are required for our current universe to look as it looks now (because the the CP violation not all matter had annihilated, diproton shouldn't be stable, nuclei with 8 and 5 hardrons shouldn't be stable, neutron shouldn't be stable but it shouldn't be very short lived either, etc, etc, etc)

So we just need to check how these variations affect these links and we'll see what link will break first.