Gravitational Waves Necessary for Human Existence, New Study Finds

do you sometimes feel like nothing can surprise you anymore this is why I read science news because last week I came across a paper that says we owe our existence to gravitational waves really we had to build an apparatus measuring several kilometers in size to measure them and they are supposed to have had some influence on the origin of life no way let's have a look so this paper definitely gets a priz for a catchy title but the content is somewhat drier than the title suggests in a nutshell the argument is this atoms are the building blocks of life except cats who are made of magic but where do they come from the atoms not the cats the lighter ones were created in the very early universe and then drifted around as gas clouds for a few hundred million years or so which is how I begin my Monday mornings too but the gas clouds eventually begin to Clump and form Stars the enormous gravitational pressure within Stars causes nuclear fusion and that subsequently creates heavier elements when stars go supernova they spit out the heavier elements these accumulate in the remaining gas clouds which then form new stars and potentially planets around them and these planets now have some of the heavier elements too however the fusion process and stars is only efficient up to iron so where do the really heavy elements come from astrophysicists currently believe that most of the really heavy elements that we find on Earth were created in neutron star merges when these neutron stars collide with each other that creates enormous pressure and that so the idea creates the really heavy elements including gold and platinum explaining why we have billionaires and indeed all the way up to plutonium I guess we'd all miss plutonium but we could probably live without it then again some of those really heavy elements are essential for our health for example iodine we need iodine to produce thyroid hormones that are necessary for growth regulation the argument in the new paper is now that if it wasn't for gravitational waves neutron star mergers would be incredibly unlikely this is because usually neutron stars merge after they've been orbiting each other for a long time they spiral into each other because here it comes gravitational waves carry away energ we know this both from some direct observations of rotation periods that speed up as time goes by and from detections of the gravitational waves emitted from the merger in the last few seconds the authors now claim that these neutron star mergers made possible by gravitational waves have provided about 96% of the iodine on Earth and all of the thorium and uranium too okay so it's not like the paper's wrong but the argument is a stretch if there has ever been one that the human thyroid gland needs iodine hardly means that life wouldn't have been possible some other way basically I think the title of the paper is an excuse to calculate some probabilities of nuclear fusion processes and I doubt it'll survive peer review that said the paper falls into a genre of similar studies known as anthropic arguments the word anthropic comes from the Greek word for human and the purpose of these arguments is to find out just what was and wasn't necessary for life to emerge on our planet or in the universe in general the idea is that this tells us something about the type of natural laws that we must observe because otherwise we wouldn't be here to see it this is known as the anthropic principle a famous example is the seemingly unlikely Resonance of an isotope of carbon that's carbon 12 this resonance is necessary for nuclear fusion and stars to create as much carbon as we see around us and for carbon there's indeed a fair argument to make that it's somehow essential to life though I'm still not quite convinced but then I'm one of those nastily stubborn people there are many other examples like the small Mass difference between protons and neutrons that keeps atoms stable or that the cosmological constant hasn't ripped apart Stars before they could form or that the moon has about the same apparent size as the sun in the sky which some scientists I do not kid you have argued was also necessary for life to rise on our planet some people think these seemingly unlikely coincidences are evidence of a Creator so should we now add gravitational ways to the list of things that prove the existence of God well I'd say that science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a Creator who pulled strings behind the scenes if it could then that Creator would just be another part of Nature and not Supernatural but that the Universe we inhabit is such a friendly and welcoming place to life is certainly something that makes me wonder if not we're missing some part of the picture maybe the laws of nature are on part what they are because that would allow for life to rise I see no logical reason why that couldn't be the case and sometimes I worry that scientists are dismissing this idea some more too quickly then again whether it's right or wrong that the universe is in one way or another ideal for life in practice it's rarely been a useful idea yes I do use a VPN Channel because I'm that kind of person who likes to cover up their tracks I use nordvpn who've been sponsoring this video and I want to tell you a little more about them nordvpn is an app that makes your internet connection Ultra secure you install it on your phone or laptop and use it to create a safe connection with novpn no one can spy on your data or track your whereabouts and it also comes with a threat protection that keeps you safe from malware trackers and malicious ads it doesn't just protect your privacy it also makes your life easier for example by helping you access pages in the US that are blocked for visitors from Europe all you need to do is pick a nordvpn server in the United States n VPN currently has a special offer which will get you four months free on a 2-year plan but only if you use our custom link 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Channel: Sabine Hossenfelder

Views: 140,608

Keywords: science without the gobbledygoook, hossenfelder, science news sabine, science news, science humor, gravitational waves, anthropic argument, astrophysics, physics, neutron stars, origin of life, anthropic principle

Id: 5NQmp1Dg6Rg

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024