FINE-TUNING THE UNIVERSE

Q13:2 “God is he who raised the heavens without any pillars that you can see; Is firmly established on the throne of authority; he has subjected the sun and the moon (to his law)! Each one runs (its course) for a term appointed. He doth regulate the affairs explaining the signs in detail that you may believe with certainty”

The universe was engineered in such a remarkable and extraordinarily fine-tuning process that made possible for it and life to exist. Science had made possible the understanding of how the early universe came about from a singularity of infinite density. Though the Quran, had centuries before the scientific understanding explained that:

Q21:30 "Do not the unbelievers see that the Heavens and the Earth were joined together as one unit of creation (Singularity) before we clove them asunder (Big Bang)?"

After this giant nuclear explosion, matter begins to scatter in all directions from the point of explosion and if the rate of that expansion, one second after the Big Bang, had been slower by even 1 part in a hundred thousand million million (that is Ten to the power of sixty), the whole universe would have re-collapsed on itself long before it reached its present size. Likewise if the rate of expansion had been faster by the same factor, then the dust from the Big Bang would have continued to expand, never coalescing into Galaxies, Stars, Planets or Us.

There are four fundamental forces that holds and binds the universe, namely the strong nuclear force (a short-range force that holds atomic nuclei together), the weak nuclear force (the force responsible for certain radioactive processes such as beta decay), electromagnetism (that propagates electricity and magnetism) and gravity (which gave matter its mass and basis for physical interaction. All of these were also fine-tuned to allow for the present state of the universe to exist as it is.

Hydrogen, the primary and first of the element created is central to the existence of the whole universe and life too. It is one of the most important element necessary for our existence, because without it there would be no water on this planet and that means no life of any form

Q21:30 “…We created every living thing from water”

 

If the delicate balance between the weak nuclear force and gravitation were slightly upset, all the hydrogen would have converted to helium within a few seconds after the Big Bang and I wouldn’t have been here writing this or you wouldn’t have been reading it.  Had it been the strong nuclear force were just a little weaker, then no elements other than Hydrogen would have formed and had this force also been a little stronger then all of the Hydrogen in the universe would have become helium and other elements and that means no Sun and water which certainly means no life as we know it.

On the other hand if electromagnetism were just a little stronger, electrons would be so tightly bound to atoms that the formation of chemical compounds would be impossible. And a little weaker would have made atoms disintegrate at room temperature. If the resonance level of electrons in the Carbon atom (our chief constituent) were just 4% lower, then Carbon atoms themselves would never have formed in the interior of the stars meaning again life as we know it wouldn’t have come by.

The further back scientist probe our origin the closer they get to the so called Planck's time which is Ten to the power minus 43 seconds after the big bang. Anything beyond the Planck’s time is imaginative physics as all the known physical laws we know broke at that moment hitting what the scientist called the "The quantum gravity wall". Is this the end of the road for human understanding of the evolutionary past of our universe? Maybe and maybe not, because future scientist may stumble upon the elusive Grand Unified Theory (Theory of everything) that may explain the quantum gravity or contrarily, like the uncertainty principle we would never be able to scale beyond the wall. Life and matter are surely, to a very large degree, explicable in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry, but the laws themselves deny us an ultimate knowledge of what causes what and what will happen next in the sub atomic world. We can never be able to have absolute knowledge, a total grasp of reality, an ultimate theoretical knowledge of the behavior of a single sub-atomic particle (the electron) with certainty. We cannot determine the position and velocity of a single electron at the same time, because as we determine the position we cannot measure the velocity and by measuring the velocity we alter the position, ever elusive. We cannot also predict whether single atom of Carbon will persist to the next instant or disintegrate in a burst of radioactive energy. This principle of uncertainty in Quantum physics, ironically, is the only certain theory in science and it forever denies us the ability of ever attaining a complete understanding of nature.

Therefore the ultimate physics of nature did not complete a chain of cause and effect, as it left an open window on events, a break in causality that is significant not because science cannot master a few tiny details of the physical universe but because it cannot address the question of why nature should be constructed along such elusive lines of the uncertainty principle of quantum physics. 

This is one of the signatures of God

Q79:27"What? are you the more difficult to create or the heaven (above)? God has constructed it: On high he raised its canopy and he has given it order and perfection"

At the moment science seems incapable to raise the curtain and peer down the mystery of the origin of both the universe and life. In fact science couldn’t even explain the behavior of a single sub atomic particle, this is only for the simple reason that the universe and life is not only "nothing but physics and chemistry" but also of metaphysics. Science had quite remarkably explain how the universe began from the big bang, the nucleosynthesis three minutes after the big bang, formation of matter 5000 years later, recombination of elements 400,000 years later and the formation of galaxies 700 million years later. Energy domination of 11 billion years after the big bang and the emergence of life almost 13 billion years later. The constitution of the present universe being 73% Dark energy, 23% Dark matter and 4% Ordinary matter.

Q72:28 “He also encompasses all their surroundings (the universe) and keeps a count of each and everything”

We should clearly understand that this universe is full of physical laws that are not enough to explain the fine tunings that are inherent within it. Blind chance could never explain the mystery of either the origin of the universe or the complex intelligent life that arose within it.