Page 74 - The Origin of Life and the Universe - International Conference 2016

The Origin of Life and the Universe

finely tuned energy level for carbon the universe would produce insufficient
carbon. Yet in order for the universe to contain sufficient carbon one
more coincidence was necessary.
So if you take carbon and add one more helium nucleus to it it'll
make oxygen. If oxygen had the same kind of energy state where here's
oxygen and its ground state and there's this energy level right above then
all of the carbon would have been converted into oxygen and again you
end up with the universe with no carbon. And it turns out that the oxygen
energy level was just below its ground state. And so therefore it doesn't
exist. And so what you end up with is three coincidences. The beryllium
eight is just stable enough it's not stable for a long time, that would use up
all the helium. But it's stable enough that another helium can come in.
And carbon has just the right energy level so that reaction proceeds
rapidly and oxygen doesn't have that level so it doesn't proceed very
rapidly at all.
And all three of those put together those amazing coincidences allow
universe with lots of carbon in oxygen in it. In fact Fred Hoyle was the
scientist who did a lot of the work discovering this. And his quote that I
put up earlier about how a super intellect has monkeyed with physics as
well as with chemistry and biology, was in response to recognizing these
three amazing coincidences. Now I use the term coincidences. But I really
think that the universe is designed to produce the carbon and oxygen the
life requires.
So let's turn our attention to similar design features that also enable
the universe to have the necessary hydrogen for life. And again to consider
what happens in the early moments of the universe, there is only hydrogen
and helium. But in those first few moments the universe is hot enough
that hydrogen can come together and make helium. And it just adds one
more proton or neutron and it eventually builds it up. And it turns out
that hydrogen has one proton, there's a form of hydrogen with 1 proton
and 1 neutron 1 proton or 3 neutrons. You can have a couple of different
forms of helium that have up to 4 of your 2 protons and 2 neutrons. And
it turns out that there is not an atom with this that has 5 where you add
protons and neutrons and get to 5. Because if there were in those