Six Numbers That Run Our Universe

If we break down the entire existence of everything, you find that there are only six numbers you need to run our universe.

Let me run a scenario by you. You are in a high tech control room, but in this room there aren’t screens or keyboards or a lot really. There’s a window that looks out onto the universe, and six dials. Now each of these dials represents a fundamental constant of nature, a specific, unchanging number built into the very fabric of reality. Now, at this point there should be sweat beading down your forehead because, if you tweak any of these dials by even a fraction, the universe as we know it vanishes. Stars fail to ignite, Carbon never forms, and space itself rips apart and collapses into a sterile singularity.

This might sound like the plot of a science fiction book, but it’s the reality of our cosmos. The British Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees wrote a book all about this called Just Six Numbers and he goes into great depth about how there are six mathematical constants that act as the DNA of the universe. Ironically, their precise values are the only reason we are here to measure them.

1. N: The Strength of Gravity – The first number is N. The ratio of Gravity to Electromagnetism, which is 10^36 (1 followed by 36 zeros), this measures the strength of the electrical force that hold an atom together, divided by the gravitational force between those same particles. So, when we look at gravity, it is in fact rather weak compared to other forces that rule the subatomic world. Like how a fridge magnet, which isn’t that strong, can pull up a paperclip, easily defeating the gravitational pull of our entire planet.Don’t touch that dial, because if gravity were slightly stronger like if N had a few less zeros for example, the universe would be a miniature, high speed nightmare. Imagine a universe where stars form out of far less material and burn through their fuel in just a few million years instead of billions. They would collapse before life ever had a chance to evolve. But what happens instead is that gravity’s extreme weakness gives the universe the vast scales of time and space it needs to build complexity. It’s a waiting game.
2. ε The Epsilon – The Epsilon is the cosmic glue that controls how tightly atomic nuclei stick together, and more specifically, it defines the fraction of mass that is converted into pure energy when hydrogen atoms fuse into helium. The value, it turns out is 0.007, or 0.7% if that’s easier, and it is quite an important value as it dictates how long and how brightly stars burn. The engine of the universe.So, why 0.007? If the number was 0.006 the nuclear glue would be too weak, and this means that hydrogen could never fuse into helium. This creates a universe that is a cold, dark expanse of lonely protons. No stars, no chemistry. Now look at 0.008, it’s the other end of this, where the glue is too strong, making hydrogen devouring so rapidly during the big bang that there would be no hydrogen left for us today. Without hydrogen there’s no h20, water and there are no long-lived stars like our 5 billion year old Sun. 
3. Ω Omega – Now we get into the density of the universe because Omega measures the actual amount of matter and energy in the universe relative to the critical density that is required to stop its expansion. It’s like a cosmic weight check, if it was too high when the early universe was forming, then gravity would have slammed on the brakes. Cosmic expansion would have come to a grinding halt, or at least a premature big crunch. On the other hand, if Omega had been too low, then the matter in the early ages would have dispersed into a cosmic mist so fast that gravity could never pull the gas clouds together to form galaxies. Lucky for us, and EVERYTHING, Omega was set to 1, keeping space flat and perfectly balanced during the outward rush of expansion.
4. Λ Lambada – The cosmological constant. Lambada is an incredibly tiny number, but it controls the dark energy that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. How? Well it acts as a subtle anti-gravity force that operates across the vast voids of space. If Lambada were slightly larger, its repulsive force would have taken over the universe even before the first galaxies could even clump together. Resulting is space expanding so aggressively that stars, planets and atoms would have been isolated permanently from one another. Drifting through an eternal, lonely dark age 🙁
5. Q: Ripples – You would have heard many times that the universe started as a hot delicious, nearly uniform soup of particles. But that is not the case. Because the early universe was not perfectly smooth, Q represents the amplitude of the tiny fabric ripples left behind moments after the Big Bang. 1 part in 100,000 to be exact, and these microscopic variations were the seeds of everything we are and see today. As gravity latched onto these slightly denser ripples, they pulled in more gas over the billions of years, until they grew into galaxies and clusters of stars. Like in all the other numbers, IF Q were smaller, like 1 in a million say, gravity would never have won the tug-o-war against expansion. The universe would have stayed a boring, featureless gas cloud. Then if Q were higher, the universe would be violent and full of hyper-massive black holes where gas would collapse so brutally that stable solar systems would have never survived all that chaos.
6. D, The Arena of Reality – The final number in the six that run our entire universe is the number of spatial dimensions we move through everyday. Length, width and height. The number is 3. Yes I know modern string theory suggests there are hidden microscopic dimensions curled up and out of sight , but life requires exactly three macroscopic dimensions to function. Now, if there were 4 dimensions, then the mathematics of gravity changes. The planetary orbits become inherently unstable, causing the Earth to have either spun so terribly into the sun or it would have flung itself out into the freezing void of deep space. So then atoms would have suffered the same fate, with their electrons collapsing into the nucleus. What if space had only 2 dimensions? Complex biology becomes impossible, because you just can’t have a continuous digestive tract or a network of intersecting blood vessels in a flat 2d plane without completely cutting the organism in half.

The Anthropic Paradox

When the cosmologists in our high-tech control room scenario are looking at these six dials, they understand that our universe is astonishingly fine-tuned for life. Now, the fact that so far we are the only civilisation in an entire galaxy, is that just luck? Or is there something else at play here? The popular explanation is that we are living in one universe in a grand network, or bubble, of multiverses. In most of these universes the 6 dials are set incorrectly, those universae (should be a real word for many universes) are dark and chaotic where no life has ever formed because the conditions are not perfect. Could it be that we find ourselves in a universe where the dials are set correctly?

So whatever the ultimate explanation for everything in existence, these six numbers remain the foundational blueprint of reality.