The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

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The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

TLDR

In this article, Barrow and Tipler examined the question of Mankind's place in the universe, taking the reader on a tour of many scientific disciplines and offering fascinating insights into issues such as the nature of life, the serach for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the past history and fate of our universe.

Abstract:

Is there any connection between the vastness of the universes of stars and galaxies and the existence of life on a small planet out in the suburbs of the Milky Way? This book shows that there is. In their classic work, John Barrow and Frank Tipler examine the question of Mankind's place in the Universe, taking the reader on a tour of many scientific disciplines and offering fascinating insights into issues such as the nature of life, the serach for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the past history and fate of our universe.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Aspects of the cosmological "coincidence problem"

Hermano Velten, +2 more

- 09 Oct 2014 -

arXiv: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astroph...

TL;DR: In this paper, the cosmological "coincidence problem" was studied in the context of the cosmic age and its relation to cosmologically constant problems, issues of structure formation and to cosmic age.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Testable anthropic predictions for dark energy

Jaume Garriga, +2 more

- 07 Feb 2003 -

Physical Review D

TL;DR: In the context of models where the dark energy density is a random variable, anthropic selection effects may explain both the "old" cosmological constant problem and the "time coincidence" as discussed by the authors.

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Journal ArticleDOI

On the Nature of Stars with Planets

I. Neill Reid

- 17 Dec 2001 -

arXiv: Astrophysics

Abstract: We consider the metallicities and kinematics of nearby stars known to have planetary-mass companions in the general context of the overall properties of the local Galactic Disk. We have used Stromgren photometry to determine abundances for both the extrasolar-planet host stars and for a volume-limited sample of 486 F, G and K stars selected from the Hipparcos catalogue. The latter data show that the Sun lies near the modal abundance of the disk, with over 45% of local stars having super-solar metallicities. Twenty of the latter stars (4.1%) are known to have planetary-mass companions. Using that ratio to scale data for the complete sample of planetary host stars, we find that the fraction of stars with extrasolar planets rises sharply with increasing abundance, confirming previous results. However, the frequency remains at the 3-4% level for stars within 0.15 dex of solar abundance, and falls to ~1% only for stars with abundances less than half solar. Given the present observational constraints, both in velocity precision and in the available time baseline, these numbers represent a lower limit to the frequency of extrasolar planetary systems. A comparison between the kinematics of the planetary host stars and a representative sample of disk stars suggests that the former have an average age which is ~60% of the latter.

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Book

EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution

Elisabet Sahtouris, +1 more

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that our urge to survival is the strongest urge we have, and we do not cease our search for solutions in the midst of crisis, even in the face of crisis.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Making predictions in an eternally inflating universe.

Alexander Vilenkin

- 15 Sep 1995 -

Physical Review D

TL;DR: A method of comparing the volumes which is rather insensitive to the choice of t is proposed, which is then applied to evaluate the relative probability of different minima of the inflaton potential and the probability distribution for the density fluctuation spectra.

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