Because the opening act of the universe 13.8 billion years in the past, a various set of characters have trod the boards – stars, planets, moons, quasars. However if you happen to are likely to get fidgety on the theatre, there’s unhealthy information: this cosmic efficiency has at the very least 100 billion years to go. Which raises a query: are we dwelling at a particular second – the cliffhanger earlier than the interval – or is that this simply an inconsequential second within the mid-plot?

One trace that it is a particular immediate entails a swathe of noticed properties of the universe generally known as elementary constants. These embody the power of gravity, for instance, and the fine-structure fixed, generally known as alpha, which determines the best way matter and lightweight work together and thus how stars burn. If these numbers had been only a shade completely different from how they’re, then life could be inconceivable.

Why is all of it so good? One doable reply is that these constants aren’t so fixed. Maybe they’ve been regularly altering over the lifetime of the universe and we occur to stay at an auspicious blip in time. John Webb on the College of Cambridge has spent a long time investigating this concept, in his case in relation to alpha. Primarily based on precision measurements of the cosmos, Webb has claimed previously that alpha has certainly morphed – though he now thinks those claims were wrong…