Why Should The Atom's Form Exist At All?

[justwondering]

Is their structure so "great" that they are just a natural, or inevitable, outcome of the mass/energy burst that took place or, within our knowledge base now, would some other form(s) of minute size matter been just as good or better? It is known that no information, say like structure plans, could be "passed" through the Big Bang event.

 

[natski]

This is bordering on philosophy! I guess you could use the anthropic principle here and say the only reason we observe atoms the way they are is because they are supportive for life to evolve, so that someone can observe them. If the electron charge and proton charge were different for example, then atoms would be very different (if even at all possible) to the ones we see now. Some physicists (string theorists and some cosmologists) have proposed that a multiverse exists, where each Universe has different fundamental constants. In the vast majority of these Universes, the physics is so bizarre that the Universes are not very interesting and cannot form structures. We could just so happen to be a Universe where things are nicely balanced to give rise to atoms, and hence structure and hence life...

 

[Chronos]

Confusing. Atoms form when the temperature drops below the level necessary to knock an electron out of a hydrogen atom. It's that simple. That process consumes about 3/4's of the mass of particles in the early universe.

 

[Phobos]

Particles other than atoms exist.