Far out cosmology: does dark energy kill galaxies? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, March 24, 2017, 13:17 (2802 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Friday, March 24, 2017, 13:24

DAVID: We may be in an area of dark energy that is different from other regions of the universe, or not:
http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/can-dark-energy-kill-galaxies?utm_source=Nautilus&...

DAVID’s comment: Barnes is suggesting we live in a special place in the universe which supports our very special Milky Way. Is this God at work to protect life in a vast universe? Makes sense to me. Read the entire article to follow his reasoning.

dhw: Since we do not know the extent of the universe, and there may even be an infinite number of “regions”, we have no idea how many regions are similar to/different from our own, but as ours is the only one we know that supports life, it’s fair enough to say it’s special. Tucked away in this article, however, is a significant comment to counterbalance your own:

QUOTE: “In our region of space, the amount of vacuum energy is minuscule, requiring all these fields to cancel one another out to an incredible degree. That seems highly improbable, but in any large enough system, even the most improbable event will occur somewhere.”

The quote can be easily interpreted as supporting my comment: life is extremely improbable and our region has it! But look at the full context of the whole quote:

"That seems highly improbable, but in any large enough system, even the most improbable event will occur somewhere. In the vast majority of cosmic regions, the excess of dark energy throws off the balance of forces that enables galaxies, stars, planets, and people to form. We see an improbably precise cancellation of known and unknown fields because we couldn’t exist otherwise." (my bold) Please avoid cherry picking. I'm watching.