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Why the universe wasn't fine-tuned for life

By Marcus Chown

8 June 2011

In The Fallacy of Fine-tuning, Victor Stenger dismantles arguments that the laws of physics in our universe were “”fine-tuned” to foster life

IF THE force of gravity were a few per cent weaker, it would not squeeze and heat the centre of the sun enough to ignite the nuclear reactions that generate the sunlight necessary for life on Earth. But if it were a few per cent stronger, the temperature of the solar core would have been boosted so much the sun would have burned out in less than a billion years – not enough time for the evolution of…

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