Privileged Planet: we have a safe sun (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 06, 2018, 00:04 (2210 days ago) @ David Turell

The rays it supplies are in the right range for us to use:

https://stream.org/nasas-parker-probe-kisses-the-sun-and-rightly-so/

"We should feel very lucky. The sun is a giant fusion bomb, converting hydrogen to helium in an ongoing chain reaction in its dense, ultra-hot core. But fortunately for us, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by this runaway fusion bomb (and that of most other stars) is almost entirely light and heat (or infrared). These have precisely the characteristics needed for advanced life to thrive on the Earth’s surface.

"The crucial visual band, which has the right energy levels for photochemistry, occupies only a tiny part of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. To grasp just how small, picture just a few playing cards in a stack stretching from here to beyond the Andromeda galaxy. Andromeda is more than 2.5 million light years away. This playing card illustration, then, represents a fraction so small as to be beyond ordinary human comprehension.

"And here is the key point: It’s thanks only to the fine tuning of the laws and constants of nature that we live in a universe awash in radiation from this tiny swath of the EM spectrum — the life-permitting swath.

Sunlight is also just right for the high-acuity vision we enjoy, thanks to another set of extraordinary coincidences in the characteristics of visual light. And it goes beyond vision. Sunlight is just right in a host of ways for beings of our size and upright android design — for beings who possess the gift of sight, breathe oxygen, and inhabit the terrestrial surface of a planet like the Earth.

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"As I note there, building on a series of related books, the fine-tuning of sunlight for advanced creatures like ourselves is just one instance of fine-tuning among a growing list in the natural sciences.

"No matter how unfashionable the notion may be in some intellectual circles, the evidence is unequivocal: Ours is a cosmos whose laws appear finely tuned for our type of life — for advanced, carbon-based “light eaters” possessing the technologically enabling miracle of sight. Whatever the cause and whatever the ultimate explanation, nature appears to be fine-tuned to an astonishing degree for beings of our biology."

Comment: Just more evidence for fine tuning.