München 2019 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 4: Philosophy of Cosmology IV

AGPhil 4.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 15:15–15:45, HS 10

Universe - Multiverse. The fine tuning of the constants of Nature — •Thomas Naumann — Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, 15738 Zeuthen, Germany

Einstein once said: "What really interests me is whether God could have created the world any differently." Our existence depends on a variety of constants which appear to be extremely fine-tuned to allow for the existence of Life. These include the number of spatial dimensions, the strengths of the forces, the masses of the particles, the composition of the Universe and others.
Starting from Leibniz’ question whether we live in the "Best of all Worlds" we ask which parts of the laws of physics are fine-tuned and whether the hypothesis of a multiverse can explain the fine-tuning of so many fundamental quantities.
We discuss the role of hypotheses and Popper’s criterion of falsification in physics as well as critique of the anthropic principle.