Overview

Are the physical laws of our universe finely tuned, such that life can exist? What does this imply about how our universe formed? Questions like these are examined in Nature's Balancing Act, presented for a wide audience. From the Big Bang to present-day research, ranging from gravitational waves to experiments on antimatter, our physical laws are shown to be slightly off balance, allowing life to exist. In its opening chapters, the following is asked: What would happen if the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, were slightly stronger or weaker? We know today that pushing the nuclear force off balance by just a few percent would create a different universe, unlike our own. Also, for life to exist, there must be a slight imbalance in the way matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang. These are just two examples of the fine tuning of physical laws that must happen for the cosmological conditions to be right for life to exist. If the universe wasn't ""just so,"" you wouldn't be here to hear about it! Even with a favorable universe, how did life on Earth begin? Can human life continue to exist for millions of years, or will we cause our own extinction? These topics are considered in the book and provide a fascinating look at our existence on Earth and the possibility of life elsewhere.

Full Product Details

9798228765184

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Ken Hicks is an experimental particle physicist. He has led experiments at accelerator facilities in the U.S. and Japan and has coauthored over 250 scientific journal articles. For fifteen years, he wrote an astronomy column for the Columbus Dispatch. Now Professor Emeritus, he taught at Ohio University for thirty-four years and is currently a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and also served as secretary-treasurer for the Division of Nuclear Physics and as program director at the National Science Foundation. For fun, he does sprint triathlons. Rich. Robust. Rugged. Smooth as the velvet night sky, gritty as the mean streets . . . Timothy Howard Jackson has had a strong interest in creative pursuits all his life in areas such as theater, choir, orchestra, and dance. That said, his original career was in the tech sector for twenty years. When he realized that he really needed to be creative again, he found his outlet in audiobooks. He traded a keyboard for a microphone, and he now works full-time as an audiobook narrator at the foot of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains in Utah. He possesses a rich, robust, rugged voice that lends credibility and interest to all types of materials. Recording sci-fi, mysteries, thrillers, and edgy nonfiction under his name and romance under a pseudonym, he has completed ninety-five books and counting.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available