OUR COSMICHABITAT

Sir Martin Rees,Astronomer Royal

Midway between atoms and stars. to Whilstthis planet has gone cyclingon according thefixed law of so simplea beginning mostwonderful .. havebeen . gravity,from forms and arebeingevolved. These are the closing words of TheOriginof Species. Astronomers aim to go back before Darwin's simple beginning. Cosmologists can set our entire Solar System in a grand evolving scenario stretching back to a so-called "hot Big Bang".We are now taking the measure of the universe, just as in earlier centuries navigators mapped out the Earth's oceans and continents. And our and the bedrock laws of nature - now subject- with it gelevance to "origins" attracts as much cultural interest as Darwinism has for more than a century. But let me start with a disclaimer.I'm often asked:isn't it presumptuous to claim to explain anything about the vast cosmos? My response is that what makes things hard to understandis how complicated they are, not how big they are. A star is simpler than an insect, which embodies layer upon layer of structure. Biologists, tackling the intricacies of butterflies and brains, face tougher challenges than astronomers. I want to discuss the limits of our theories. But let us start with our Earth, and the possibility that it might not be the only inhabited planet. Planetsand Lfe An iconic image from the 1960s was the first photograph of the whole Earth from space: the fragile beauty of our home planet's land, oceans and clouds contrasted starklywith the sterile moonscape on which the astronautsleft their footprints. Spaceprobeshave alreadytaught us much about the other planets of our Solar System. Moreover, we have learnt that other stars are not mere "points of light"many are other Suns, orbited by retinues of planets. Giordiano Bruno, a Dominican monk, was burnt at the stake in February 1600 for "obstinateand pertinacious heresies".Among Bruno's conjectures was that

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There are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns, no worse and no less than this globe of ours. In the last years of the 20th century, his prescient belief was vindicated: there are, assuredly, planetary systems around many other stars. In 30 years, we'll be able to hang on our walls another poster that will have even more impact - a telescope image of another Earth, orbiting some distant star. Bruno had a further conviction: "No reasonable mind can assume that heavenly bodies which may be far more magnificent than ours would not bear upon them creatures similar or even superior to those upon our human earth." Our conception of the physical universe has of course been transformed since Bruno's time, but we still cannot gauge the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence. Despite this enduring ignorance - or maybe because of it discussion of this subject is polarised. Some side with Bruno. Others argue dogmatically that we are alone. For myself, I think agnosticism is the only rational stance on this issue. We don't know enough about life's origins - still less about what natural selection can and cannot do - to say whether intelligent aliens are likely or unlikely. Alien Life? There are two great questions, important to distinguish from each other. First, how did life begin? I think there's a real chance of progress here, so that we will know whether life is a "fluke," or whether it is near-inevitable in the kind of initial "soup" expected on a young planet. But there is a second question: Even if simple life exists, what are the odds against its evolving into something that we would recognise as intelligent? This question is likely to prove far more intractable. Even if there is life elsewhere within our Solar System, nobody expects it to be "advanced". But are there, somewhere within our Galaxy (perhaps on an Earth-like planet orbiting a distant star) creatures that could be deemed intelligent? The likelihood of this involves a key issue of biological evolution. If simple life exists, what are the odds against it evolving into something that we would recognise as intelligent? These odds could be small. Even if primitive life were common, the emergence of"advanced" life may not be.

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Searchesfor life beyond the Solar System will justifiablyfocus on Earth-like planets orbiting long-lived solar-type stars. But there are more exotic alternatives. Perhapslife can flourish at lower temperatures, even on a planet that has been flung into the frozen darknessof interstellar space, whose main warmth comes from internal radioactivity (the process that heats the Earth's core). Authors of fiction have reminded us that there could be diffuse living structures, freely-floating in interstellar clouds: these entities would live (and, if intelligent, think) in slow motion, but nonetheless may come into their own in the long-range future. Claims that advancedlife is widespread must confront the famous question first posed by the great physicist Enrico Fermi: "Why aren't the aliens here?" Why haven't they visited Earth already,or at least manifested their existence in a way that leaves no doubt?Why aren't they, or their artefacts, staring us in the face?This argument gains further weight when we realise that some stars are billions of years older than our Sun: if life were common, its emergence should have had a "head start" on planets around these ancient stars. (Some people of course claim we have been visited. But if aliens really had the brainpower and technology to reach the Earth, would they merely despoil a few cornfields? Or content themselves with briefly abducting a few wellknown cranks?) But the Fermi paradox isn't entirely compelling, and Searches for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) are surely a worthwhile gamble, even if one accepts heavy odds against success, because of the huge philosophical import of any detection. A manifestly artificial signal - an ultra-narrow-band as radio transmission, or a "message" boring as a set of prime numbers or the of pi in binary notation - would convey the momentous message that digits "intelligence"(though not necessarily "consciousness")wasn't unique to the Earth and had evolved elsewhere, and that concepts of logic and physics in weren't peculiar to the "hardware" human skulls. It makes sense to listen, rather than transmit.Any two-way exchange would take decades, so there would be time to plan a measured response. But in the long run, a dialogue could develop. The logician Hans Freudentalproposed an entire language for interstellar communication, showing how it could start with the limited vocabulary needed for simple mathematical statements, and graduallybuild up and diversify the realm of discourse. Even if intelligence were widespread, we may only ever become aware of a small and atypicalfraction of it. Some "brains" may package reality in a fashion that we can't conceive. Others could be uncommunicative: living contemplative lives, perhapsdeep under some planetary ocean, doing nothing

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to reveal their presence. There may be a lot more life out there than we could ever detect. Absence of evidence wouldn't be evidence of absence. The only type of intelligence we could detect would be one that led to a technology that we could recognise.
Is Our Earth CosmicallyImportant? It would in some ways be disappointing if searches for alien intelligence were

doomed to fail. On the other hand, it would boost our cosmic self-esteem: if our tiny Earth were a unique abode of intelligence, we could view it in a less humble perspective than it would merit if the Galaxy already teemed with complex life. If the cosmos is already teeming with life, the Earth's fate would be of "merely"terrestrial significance. Life could "take over" the cosmos whatever happens here. Thomas Wright of Durham expressed this thought 250 years ago: "In this great Celestial Creation, the Catastrophyof a World, such as ours, or even the total Dissolution of a System of Worlds, may possibly be no more to the great Author of Nature, than the most common Accident in Life with us, and in all Probabilitysuch final and general DoomsDays may be as frequent there, as even Birth-Daysor Mortality with us upon this Earth." But suppose Earthis the unique abode of intelligence in the Galaxy.The fate of humanity could then have an importance that is truly cosmic- reverberating happens here through the whole ofThomas Wright's "CelestialCreation":wkhat might conceivably make the difference between a near eternity filled with ever more complex and subtle forms of life and one filled with nothing but base matter. The first aquaticcreaturesthat crawled onto dry land more than 300 million years ago, may have been unprepossessing brutes. But if they had been clobbered, the potential of land-based life would have been destroyed. Likewise even the most misanthropicamong us should be mindful of the posthuman potentialities that would be foreclosed were humans to be snuffed out, and fervently hope that we avoid irreversible catastrophe at least until selfsustainingcommunities had started to establishthemselves beyond the Earth. This thought should give us even stronger motives to cherish this "pale blue dot"in the cosmos, and not foreclose life's future - a future that could be even more prolonged than the time-span over which simple life has evolved into humans.

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TheLong-Range Cosmic Future Life's far future will long remain highly speculative, but it may be easier to forecast the fate of stars and galaxies. Just within the last two or three years, cosmologists have developed a consensus about the basic ingredients that make up our universe. Ordinary atoms, in stars, nebulae, and diffuse intergalacticgas, provide just 4 percent of the mass; dark matter provides 20-30 percent; the rest (i.e., 6&-76 percent) is dark energy latent in empty space. Stars will eventually die; galaxies will recede and fade. But the expansion of the universe will continue forever: indeed it may actuallyaccelerate because dark energy (with negative pressure) is the dominant constituent. The classicalview was that everything in the "sublunary sphere"consisted of the four "elements" - earth, air, fire and water - but the heavens were constituted from some quite different "fifth essence". Modern cosmology revives a similar antithesis. Ordinary atoms seem just an "afterthought"or minor pollutant in a cosmos whose overall evolution is governed by quite different substances. Backto the Beginning Astronomers can actually see the past: when we observe distant galaxies, we see them as they were when their light set out on its journey towards us, billions of years ago. The Hubble SpaceTelescope has given us some amazing "deep exposures".These show small patches of sky, less than a hundredthof the area covered by a full moon. But the images are densely covered with faint smudges of light - a billion times fainter than any star that can be seen with the unaided eye. Each is actually an entire galaxy, thousands of light-years across, which appears so small and faint because of its huge distance. They are being viewed when they have only recently formed. They have not yet settled down into steadily-spinning"pinwheels"like Andromeda. Some consist mainly of glowing diffuse gas that hasn't yet condensed into stars. When we look at Andromeda, we sometimes wonder if there may be other beings looking back at us. Maybe there are. But on these remote galaxies there surely aren't. Nuclear fusion (the power source that makes stars shine) hasn't yet had time to convert pristine hydrogen into carbon, silicon and iron. They'd not yet harbour planets, and presumablyno life. But what about still more remote epochs, before any galaxies had formed? The Belgian priest and MIT graduate George Lemaitre was, along with the

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Friedmann, the first to speculate about whether the was expanding from a dense beginning. It was Fred Hoyle, in his radio universe talks in the early 1950s, who introduced the phrase "big bang", as a derisive Russian Alexander description of a theory he didn't like. The flippant name "big bang" has stuck. And the evidence for it has firmed up, to the extent that almost all cosmologists accept that our Universe emerged from a hot dense "beginning". Intergalactic space isn't completely cold. It's pervaded by weak microwaves which warm it to a temperature of nearly three degrees above absolute zero. These microwaves are indeed an "afterglow" of a pre-galactic era when the entire Universe was hot, dense and opaque. The expansion has cooled and diluted the radiation, and stretched its wavelength. But this primordial heat is still around - it fills the Universe and has nowhere else to go, and its present temperature is 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. And there's another "fossil" of the hot dense beginning: when the entire universe was squeezed hotter than a star, nuclear reactions would occur. The temperature was only that high for the first three minutes, but that was enough to convert 23 percent of the material into helium - we can calculate that number, and it turns out to agree with the fraction of helium we actually find. I think the extrapolation back to the stage when the Universe had been expanding for a few seconds deserves to be taken as seriously as, for instance, what geologists or palaeontologists tell us about the early history of our Earth. Their inferences are just as indirect (and less quantitative). But what happened in the first second? Can we extrapolate further back still? Before addressing this question, let me recall something that puzzled Isaac Newton three hundred years ago. He could explain the orbits of the planets, but the initial "set up" of the Solar System was a mystery to him. Why were the orbits of the planets all close to a single plane, the ecliptic, whereas the comets came from random directions? In his book Optickshe writes: "blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in orbits concentrick Such a wonderful uniformity" must, he claimed, be the result of Providence. This coplanarity of the orbits, however, is now understood: it's a natural outcome of the Solar System's origin as a spinning proto-stellar disc. Indeed, we can trace things back far further still - to the first second of the Big Bang. But this flashback to Newton reminds us that conceptually we still face a similar barrier to our understanding. However much the causal chain may have been lengthened, we still as some stage have to say "things are as they are because they were as they were". Newton wondered why the planets were set up in a particular plane. We are perplexed about why the few-second-old

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universe was set up to expand at a particular rate, and with a particular set of ingredients. Any explanation must lie in not just the first second, but the first tiny fraction of a second. What's the chance, then, of pushing theytarrier back still further? The further we extrapolate back, the less foothold we have in experiment. For the first trillionth of a second every particle would have more energy than the most powerful particle accelerators can reach. The physics governing the ultra-early universe is still speculative - unfinished business for the 21st century. The two science are quantum great "pillars" of twentieth-century mechanics, crucial in the microworld, and Einstein's theory of gravity, which does not incorporate quantum concepts. But we haxe no single framework that reconciles and unifies them. This lack doesn't impede terrestrial science, nor indeed the advance of astronomy, because most phenomena involve either quantum effects (if they're small) or gravity (if a big mass is involved), but not both. But right back at the beginning, everything we can now see was squeezed (according to some theories) into a region the size of a single atom, and quantum vibrations could shake the entire universe. To understand the first instants after the Big Bang, or the space and time near the "singularity" inside black holes, demands a unification of quantum theory and gravity. Several approaches are being followed, but there is no yet about which is the right one. The most ambitious and encouraging approach postulates that the fundamental entities in our universe consensus are not points, but tiny string loops, and that the various sub-nuclear particles are different modes of vibration - different harmonics of these strings. Moreover, these strings are vibrating not in our ordinary space (with three spatial dimensions, plus time) but in a space of 10 or 11 dimensions. There could even be other universes separated from ours in an extra dimension, just as many (two-dimensional) surfaces could exist, without contact with each other, in our three-dimensional space. (Whether a universe could have more than one time-dimension is less straightforward. Certainly a language with more tenses would be needed to describe what happens in it). How, then, can we check whether the theory is right? We'd all be impressed if a "superstring theory" accounted for various types of subatomic particles quarks, gluons, and so forth - or if it predicted something new, experimental or cosmological, caused by the extra dimensions. But many are already willing to bet on superstrings. This is partly because it almost seems to "predict" that a force like gravity should exist, but partly also almost for aesthetic reasons.

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There are precedents for this kind of stance. Einstein's theory of graxity general relativity - gained widespread acceptance because of its aesthetic appeal, even when its empirical support Nas tenuous and imprecise. It transcended Newton's theory by offering deeper insights. It wxas famously corroborated by the measured deflection of starlight during an eclipse in 1919 - but Einstein himself set more store by his theory's elegance: X hen asked how he would have reacted, had the eclipse result been discrepant, he replied that he would have been "sorry for the good Lord". Likewise Edward Witten, the leading guru of superstrings, has said "good wrong ideas are extremely scarce, and good wrong ideas that ex en remotely rival the majesty of string theory have never been seen". Another hope is that superstrings may offer new insights into the concepts of the quantum. Richard Feynman said that "nobody really understands quantum mechanics". It works most scientists apply it almost unthinkingly. As John marvellously: Polkinghorne put it, "the average quantum mechanic is no more philosophical than the average motor mechanic". But it has its "spooky" aspects, xwhichmany thinkers from Einstein onwards have found hard to stomach, and it's hard to believe that we've already attained the optimum perspectix e on it. We are at the stage the Babylonians were with eclipses and the calendar - useful predictions

but no good"explanation".
The lure of the "final theory" is Nery strong. Ambitious students want to tackle the number-one challenge. But an undue focus of talent in one highly theoretical is sure to be frustrating for all but a xer few exceptionally talented (or lucky) individuals. I advise my own graduate students to multiply the importance of their thesis problem by the (small) probabilitx they'll solhe it, and maximise that product. I remind them also of Peter MedaNxar's Nxise remark that No scientist is admired for failing to solve a problem beyond his competence. The most he can hope for is the kindly contempt earned by utopian politicians. What a FundamentalTheoryWon'tTell Us A unified theory, if it were achieved, would be the culmination of an intellectual quest that started well before Nevwton, and continued through Maxwell, Einstein and their successors. It would exemplifiy \hat the great physicist Eugene Wigner called "the unreasonable effectix eness of mathematics in the physical sciences". Also the remarkable contingency - and it surely

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would be a contingency - that human mental powers could grasp the bedrock of physicalreality. But I hope it's not curmudgeonly nonetheless to point out what it wouldn't do. Such a theory would not signal the end of challenging science. Indeed, it would actuallyhave minimal impact on most of science. Two phrases often used in popular books - "final theory" or "theory of everything" have connotationsthat are not only hubristicbut very misleading. Most of nature - even the inanimate world - is neither explained nor understood. We are almost all, in a sense, reductionists: we believe that any system, however large and complex, whether living or inanimate, is governed by Schrodinger'sequation - the basic equation of quantum theory. In practice, though, we can't solve this equation for anything more complicated than a single molecule or a regular crystal, certainly not for living cell. The sciences are often likened to different levels of a building - logic in the basement, mathematicson the first floor, then particle physics, then the rest of physics and chemistry, and so forth as we climb upwards towards the social scientists and economists in the penthouse. But the analogy's poor. The sciences dealing with complex systems superstructures- the "higher-level" are autonomous, and aren't imperilled by an insecure base. There are "lawsof nature"in the macroscopic domain which are just as much of a challenge as anything in the microworld for instance, those that describe the transition between regular and chaotic behaviour, and which apply to phenomena as disparateas dripping taps and animal populations. Even if we had a "hyper-computer" that could solve Schrodinger'sequation for a complex macroscopic system, the output wouldn't yield any real understanding or insight. If we want to understand why an albatross, after weeks of wandering over thousands of miles of oceans, returns to its nesting place, we'll get no guidance - even in principle - from fundamentalphysics. Problems in chemistry, biology and the environmental and human sciences remain unsolved because scientists haven't elucidated the patterns, structures, and interconnections - not because we don't understand subatomic physics well enough. Indeed, the very small (subatomic scales) and the very large (cosmic scales) are in a real sense the most tractable.The complexities of the everyday world are a great challenge. It is no coincidence that we ourselves the most complex entities we know of are on a scale midway between atoms and stars. It would take about as many human bodies to make up a star as there are atoms in each of us.

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ArePhysical Laws Special? If aliens exist, and we ever establish contact, we're assured one common interest. They may live on planet Zog and have seven tentacles, but they'd be made of similar atoms and governed by universal laws. If they had eyes and clear skies, they'd gaze out on the same vista of starsand galaxies as we do.We'd all trace our origins back to a single "genesisevent"about 14 billion years ago. We'd all share the potentialities of a (perhapsinfinite) future. But our existence (and that of the aliens, if there are any) depends on our shared universe being rather special. Any universe hospitable to life - what we in might call a biophilic universe - has to be "adjusted" a particularway.The must be just right: not so slow that the universe re-collapses quickly expansion to a crunch, nor so fast that gravity'soverwhelmed, and galaxies can't condense out. And there are other prerequisitesfor a complex cosmos. For instance,if the force that binds atomic nuclei together were a few percent weaker, no atoms other than hydrogen would be stable. Nor could any complexity emerge if the residue of the Big Bangwere entirely darkmatter- no ordinaryatoms at all. Nor if gravitywere so strong that any large organismgot" crushed. Nor if there were (for instance) two ratherthan three dimensions. If our existence depends on a seeminglyspecialcosmic recipe, how shouldwe react to the implicit fine-tuning?Unlike evidence for biological design, it cannot be attributedto any evolutionaryadjustment- the laws of physicsare"given" and can't adjustin symbiosiswith their surroundings.One hard-headedresponse is that we couldn't exist without the requisite"tuning": manifestlyare here, so we there's nothing to be surprisedabout. But there seems more to it than that. Maybea fundamentalset of equations, which some day will be written on Tshirts, fixes all key properties of our universe uniquely.But there would still be something to wonder about. It's not guaranteed that simple equations permit complex consequences. To take an analogy from mathematics, consider the beautiful pattern known as the Mandelbrot Set. This pattern is encoded by a short algorithm, but has infinitely deep structure: tiny parts of it reveal novel intricacies however much they are magnified. In contrast, you can readily write down other algorithms, superficiallysimilar,that yield very dull patterns.Why should the fundamental equations encode something with such potential complexity, rather than the boring or sterile universe that many recipes would lead to? Some scientists, impressed by these arguments, invoke providence: modern parallel of theologianWilliam Paley's 200-year-old metaphor of the "watchand the watchmaker".But if one doesn't believe in "providence",there is another

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perspective - a highly speculative one - that might allay the mystery of the apparent "fine-tuning". This is the idea that what we have traditionally called "our universe" may not be the whole of physical reality, but is a domain or "oasis" where conditions are propitious for complexity to emerge. This line of thought is an extrapolation of a perspective-shift that we have already made on a more modest scale - that of the stars and planets. Our Earth is a special planet - the optimum size, temperature, orbit and so forth to allow a biosphere. But if there are zillions of stars, each with planetary systems, it wouldn't be surprising to find some planets like the Earth. Maybe an analogous argument applies, on a far grander scale, to our entire universe. Our universe - the aftermath of "our" Big Bang - would be just one "atom," in an infinite ensemble of Big Bangs, which evolve differently, and "ring the changes" on the important physical numbers. Maybe there is something uniquely self-consistent about the actual recipe for our universe, and no big bang could end up producing a different kind of universe. But a far more interesting possibility (which is certainly tenable in our present state of ignorance of the underlying laws) is that some of what we call "laws of nature" may in this grander perspective be local by-laws, consistent with some overarching theory governing the ensemble, but not uniquely fixed by that theory. As an analogy, consider the form of snowflakes. Their ubiquitous six-fold symmetry is a direct consequence of the properties and shape of water molecules. But snowflakes display an immense variety of patterns because each is moulded by its micro-environments: how each flake grows is sensitive to the fortuitous temperature and humidity changes during its growth. If physicists achieved a fundamental theory, it would tell us which aspects of nature were direct consequences of the bedrock theory (just as the symmetrical template of snowflakes is due to the basic structure of a water molecule) and which are (like the distinctive pattern of a particular snowflake) the outcome of accidents. The accidental features could be imprinted during the cooling that follows the big bang - rather as a piece of red-hot iron becomes magnetised when it cools down, but with an alignment that may depend on chance factors. Some seemingly "fine-tuned" features of our universe could then only be explained by "anthropic" arguments, which are analogous to what any observer or experimenter does when they allow for selection effects in their measurements: if there are many universes, most of which are not habitable, we should not be surprised to find ourselves in one of the habitable ones! Putting these ideas on a firm footing must await a successful fundamental theory that tells us whether there could have been many Big Bangs rather than

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just one, and (if so) how much variety they might display. What we've traditionally called "the universe" may be the outcome of one Big Bang among many, just as our Solar System is merely one of many)planetary systems in the Galaxy. The forces and particles in our universe may be "cosmic environmental accidents," rather than being uniquely defined by the underlying theory. The quest for exact formulae for what we normally call the constants of nature may consequently be as vain and misguided as was Kepler's quest for the exact numerology of planetary orbits. And other universes will become part of scientific discourse, just as "other worlds" have been for centuries. Elucidating the ultra-early Universe, and firming up (or perhaps refuting) the concept of the Multiverse, are challenges for the new century. These challenges look less daunting if we look back at what was achieved during the twentieth century. A hundred years ago, it was a mystery why the stars were shining; we had no concept of anything beyond our Milky Way, which was assumed to be a static system. In contrast, our panorama now stretches out for more than ten billion light-years, and cosmic history can be traced back to within a fraction of a second of the "beginning". Such a fundamental theory, if it comes, would deepen our understanding of space, time, and the basic natural forces governing the everyday Aworld,as well as elucidating the ultra-early universe and how unique our Big Bang was. But as well as being a "fundamental" science, cosmology is also the grandest of the environmental sciences. It aims to understand how a simple fireball evolved, over 14 billion years, into the complex cosmic habitat we find around us - how, here on Earth, and perhaps in many biospheres elsewhere, creatures evolved, able to reflect on how they emerged. And this may be the greatest scientific challenge of all. One final thought: any understanding of why anything exists - what breaths life into the equations, and actualises them in a real cosmos - remains in the realm of metaphysics. Here we encounter the deepest mystery, which physicists should gladly concede to the philosophers.

in This essay wasfirst dehlvered May 2002 at the Haj -on- [ye Festuialin 1'ables is publishedhere and thefirst time. Sir Martin Rees Is Royal Societi Professor King's College, CambridgeUnnersit) at for and Astromomer Royalof GreatBritain. He waspreviousl}Plumian Professor succeeding of.Astronomy, FredHoyle at the age of thirty.The ideas discussedin this essayare expandedin his recent Iolume of the same title (PrincetonUniverityPress, 2003). Amonghis other booksare Just Six Numbers: The

1999) and Before the Beginning:Our Deep ForcesThat Shape the Universe (BasicBooks,
Universe and Others (Peseus,1998).

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