The Goldilocks Enigma by PCW Davies

[marcus]

PCW Davies has a fun paper out called
THE PROBLEM OF WHAT EXISTS
http://arxiv.org/astro-ph/0602420

the paper cites a new book in the works by Davies

Davies, P.C.W. (2006) The Goldilocks Enigma (Allen Lane, London), in the press.

if you want something to illustrate the "goldilocks" idea, think of any kind of "fine-tuning", for instance of the cosmological constant.
why are some physical parameters neither to large or too small, but "just right"?

Goldilocks Enigma is a catchy, also a good, title----and judging from the short WHAT EXISTS paper, Davies thinks clearly and comprehensively. I guess I should also say independently---he examines common assumptions critically and forms his own ideas. So the book could become widely read and have some impact on current discussions.

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The What Exists paper has already gotten a bit of attention. I flagged it around 5:30 PM pacific yesterday (half hour after it posted on arxiv) and today Christine noted it on her blog. Also today she wrote about it at Peter's blog and he acknowledged. Haven't seen any other comment but there could well be more coming.

 

[Chronos]

I suspect some of the constants we currently regard as fundamental are not truly fundamental, and some of the apparent fine tuning is merely a mathematical artifact arising from different ways of expressing the same underlying principles. It is, however, difficult to resist the suspicion that all the truly fundamental constants are relational and self tuning is a natural consequence.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I suspect some of the constants we currently regard as fundamental are not truly fundamental, and some of the apparent fine tuning is merely a mathematical artifact arising from different ways of expressing the same underlying principles. It is, however, difficult to resist the suspicion that all the truly fundamental constants are relational and self tuning is a natural consequence.

Well, that's some of what Davies says in his "What Is" paper. He offers the idea that the undetermined parameters in the Standard Model are not expressions of deeper physics but just "frozen accidents", results of some twiddle or other when the particles were condensing after the big bang.