For the reason that opening act of the universe 13.8 billion years in the past, a various set of characters have trod the boards – stars, planets, moons, quasars. However when you are inclined to get fidgety on the theatre, there may be dangerous information: this cosmic efficiency has not less than 100 billion years to go. Which raises a query: are we residing at a particular second – the cliffhanger earlier than the interval – or is that this simply an inconsequential second within the mid-plot?

One trace that it is a particular instantaneous includes a swathe of noticed properties of the universe often known as basic constants. These embody the energy of gravity, for instance, and the fine-structure fixed, often known as alpha, which determines the way in which matter and light-weight work together and thus how stars burn. If these numbers had been only a shade totally different from how they’re, then life is perhaps unimaginable.

Why is all of it so excellent? One doable reply is that these constants aren’t so fixed. Maybe they’ve been progressively altering over the lifetime of the universe and we occur to dwell at an auspicious blip in time. John Webb on the College of Cambridge has spent many years investigating this concept, in his case in relation to alpha. Primarily based on precision measurements of the cosmos, Webb has claimed up to now that alpha has certainly morphed – though he now thinks those claims were wrong…