A Briefer History of Time (2009)
A Briefer History of Time
“So instead we have made progress by finding partial theories that describe a limited range of happenings and by neglecting other effects or approximating them by certain numbers. The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many numbers—for example, the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron—that we cannot, at the moment at least, predict from theory. Instead, we have to find them by observation and then insert them int...o the equations. Some call these numbers fundamental constants; others call them fudge factors.Whatever your point of view, the remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. For example, if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different, it would have spoiled the balance of the electromagnetic and gravitational force in stars, and either they would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium or else they would not have exploded.MoreLess
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