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Stories Chosen For You
Now imagine a universe with extremely weak gravity. Its matter would struggle to clump together to form stars, planets and – ultimately – living beings. It seems we are pretty lucky to have gravity that is just right for life in our universe.
This isn’t just the case for gravity. The values of many forces and particles in the universe, represented by some 30 so-called fundamental constants, all seem to line up perfectly to enable the evolution of intelligent life. But there’s no theory explaining what values the constants should have – we just have to measure them and plug their numbers into our equations to accurately describe the cosmos.
So why do the fundamental constants take the values they do? This is a question that physicists have been battling over for decades. It is also the topic of the second episode of our new podcast series, Great Mysteries of Physics – hosted by me, Miriam Frankel, science editor at The Conversation, and supported by FQxI, the Foundational Questions Institute.
“We don’t know whether some of those constants are linked deep down. If we had a deeper theory, we’d find that they’re not actually independent of each other,” explains Paul Davies, a theoretical physicists at Arizona State University. “But we don’t have that theory at the moment, we’ve just got all these numbers.”
Some physicists aren’t too bothered by the seemingly fine-tuned cosmos. Others have found comfort in the multiverse theory. If our universe is just one of many, some would, statistically speaking, end up looking just like ours. In such a universe, says Davies, “beings will pop up and marvel at the fact that they live in a universe that looks like it’s rigged in favor of their existence, but actually we’re just winners in a cosmic lottery.”
But many physicists, including Davies, are holding out for a more fundamental theory of nature which can explain exactly what values the constants should have in the first place. “I usually say two cheers for the multiverse, cause I think it’s better than just saying God did it,” he argues, adding that to get to three cheers you need a more complete theory.
That said, in the absence of a deeper theory, it is hard to estimate exactly how fine-tuned our universe is. Fred Adams, a physicist at the University of Michigan, has done a lot of research to try to find out, and he has discovered that the mass of a quark called the down quark (quarks are elementary particle which make up the atomic nucleus, for example) can only change by a factor of seven before rendering the universe, as we know it, lifeless.
But how fine tuned is that? “If you want to tune a radio, you have to know the frequency of the signal to 1% – and 1% is much more tuned than a factor of seven,” explains Adams. “So it’s much harder to tune a radio than to tune a universe”. Intriguingly, his work has also shown it is possible to get universes that are more life-friendly than ours. “You can make a more logical universe that produces more structure, potentially produces more habitable environments, and I guess by implication supports life better,” he explains.
There are experiments which could help settle the fine-tuning debate. For example, some projects are trying to find out whether the constants we see around us really are constant – perhaps they vary ever so slightly over time or space. And if that were the case, it would be a blow to those who believe the cosmos is fine-tuned.
You can also listen to Great Mysteries of Physics via any of the apps listed above, our RSS feed, or find out how else to listen here. You can also read .
Miriam Frankel, Podcast host, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
It often occurs as an involuntary memory. That is, we make no effort to try to recall such memories, they just come to mind spontaneously.
Research has recently begun to uncover why music appears to be such a good cue for invoking memories. First, music tends to accompany many distinctive life events, such as proms, graduations, weddings and funerals, so it can play an important role in reconnecting us with these self-defining moments.
Music also often captures our attention, due to the way it affects our minds, bodies and emotions.
When music draws our attention, this increases the likelihood that it will be encoded in memory together with details of a life event. And this then means it is able to serve as an effective cue for remembering this event years later.
Positive memories
In recent research my colleague and I found that the emotional nature of a piece of music is an important factor in how it serves as a memory cue.
We compared music with other emotional memory cues that had been rated by a large group of participants as conveying the same emotional expression as the music excerpts we used. This included comparing music with “emotional sounds”, such as nature and factory noises and “emotional words”, such as “money” and “tornado”.
Music can evoke memories and creates magical moments. pexels/sebastian ervi
When compared with these emotionally matched cues, the music didn’t elicit any more memories than the words. But what we did find was that music evoked more consistently positive memories than other emotional sounds and words. This was especially the case for negative emotional stimuli. Specifically, sad and angry music evoked more positive memories than sad and angry sounds or words.
It seems then that music appears to have the ability to reconnect us with emotionally positive moments from our pasts. This suggests that using music therapeutically may be particularly fruitful.
How and when
The familiarity of a piece of music also, perhaps unsurprisingly, plays a role. In another recent study, we found that more familiar music evokes more memories and brings memories to mind more spontaneously.
So part of the reason music may be a more effective cue for memories than, for instance, our favorite film or favorite book, is that we typically reengage with songs more often over our lifetimes compared to films, books or TV shows.
The situations when we listen to music may also play a role. Previous research shows that involuntary memories are more likely to come back during activities where our mind is free to wander to thoughts about our past. These activities tend to be non-demanding in terms of our attention and include things like commuting, traveling, housework and relaxing.
These types of activities align almost perfectly with those recorded in another study where we asked participants to keep a diary and note when music evoked a memory, along with what they were doing at the time it happened. We found that daily activities that often go hand in hand with listening to music – such as travelling, doing chores or going for a run – tend to lead to more involuntary memories in the first place.
When we listen to a piece of music from years ago, we seem to travel back to that moment. pexels/cottonbro studio
This contrasts with other hobbies, such as watching TV, which can require our mind to be more focused on the activity at hand and so less likely to wander to scenarios from our past.
It seems then that music is not only good at evoking memories but also the times when we are more likely to listen to music are the times when our minds may naturally be more likely to wander anyway.
Music is also present during many life events that are distinctive, emotional or self-defining – and these types of memories tend to be more easily recalled.
Indeed, the power of music to connect us with our past shows how music, memories and emotions are all linked – and it seems certain songs can act as a direct line to our younger selves.
Kelly Jakubowski, Assistant Professor in Music Psychology, Durham University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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