Life in a random universe: Sciama's argument reconsidered

TL;DR

This paper reevaluates Sciama's argument, showing that a universe with randomly chosen constants could appear fine-tuned for life, challenging previous assumptions about the rarity of life-supporting universes.

Contribution

It introduces a mechanism where a random universe can mimic fine-tuning for life, suggesting new perspectives on the apparent fine-tuning of fundamental constants.

Findings

A random universe can appear fine-tuned for life under certain assumptions.

Only a dozen unknown constants may be needed for this mechanism to work.

The mechanism has potential broader applications beyond cosmology.

Abstract

Random sampling in high dimensions has successfully been applied to phenomena as diverse as nuclear resonances, neural networks and black hole evaporation. Here we revisit an elegant argument by the British physicist Dennis Sciama, which demonstrated that were our universe random, it would almost certainly have a negligible chance for life. Under plausible assumptions, we show that a random universe can masquerade as `intelligently designed,' with the fundamental constants instead appearing to be fined tuned to be achieve the highest probability for life to occur. For our universe, this mechanism may only require there to be around a dozen currently unknown fundamental constants. We speculate on broader applications for the mechanism we uncover.