Right, it’s a testable prediction that naturally falls from the physics. The average of extreme opposing runaway tendencies that are common to the anthropic coincidences make many testable predictions about the observed universe.

It’s the same physics that predicts that life, (past or present), will not be found on Mars nor Venus, (a prediction which is being better and better established to this very day), but it will be found in other galaxy systems along the layer of spacetime that makes-up the goldilocks enigma.

For example, Venus suffers from the runaway greenhouse effect, whereas Mars represents the cold stagnate equally-runaway proof of what will happen if extremist environmentalists get things all their way too, so heed the lesson of this anthropic coincidence.

Please take further discussion of this off topic conversation to this post on my weblog.

Whether or not string theories correctly describe our universe is not a scientific question precisely because they promote no actual theory.

All we have is 10^500 possible theories that might in certain limiting cases describe our universe.

The problem is the limiting cases are not what is interesting. We want to know the why/how/what is going on in the great experimental phenomena and observations of the day. The string theories seem to be silent. All they offer is that when new exciting limiting cases come along they happily pronounce that one of the 10^500 theories probably allows that too.

Sean, in your future post you tease that you think string theory could at least in theory be ‘testable.’ Do you mean ‘falsifiable’ or do you mean experiments that can be imagined which would bolster string theory?

I would really like to hear if you think falsifiable tests, as opposed to those which would merely bolster, are even possible for the landscape.

I really enjoyed your bloggingheads chat. Speaking as someone with just an undergraduate study in physics, I have to say I’ve followed this string blog controversy with pretty good attention. I remember in my undergraduate days being very excited by string theory. However, for me Peter Woit and Glashow really are winning the argument. About the chat:

You kept repeating that the landscape is just a theory and is neither good nor evil and that whether we *like it* or not it is either true or false.

But that is the very problem. The question => “Is the landscape true or false” is really not a respectable scientific question. We do not know nor can we seemingly ever know in the realm of scientific knowledge for the near to far future.

You keep saying you don’t care if it is good or bad you just want to know if it is *true or false* This is exactly the issue that string antagonists insist is the problem. The landscape just does not seem like a proper scientific question.

Until string theory becomes at least theoretically falsifiable I just don’t see how it can survive as a *scientific* theory. From your chat it seems String theorists are a little hurt by Glashow’s comment. I think they should take it to heart.

It is only Life as we know it requires (our) certain pre-requisites be met
And an earthlike planet in another galaxy (or parallel universe) is no guarantee that life would evolve, nor that it would evolve as on this planet. However it would mean that if we could get there - we would be able to colonise, or who knows maybe even encounter the descendants of our common ancestors.

Getting off topic, but that’s not what the physics predicts, so go ahead and be the first to falsify the observation.

and if it has developed ‘elsewhere’….

… then it will also be, “as we know it”.

FYI… I was being sarcastic when I answerd you, and you really should thoroughly investigate all of the linked papers and websites.

the alphabet can be put into CODE
the same CODE can be used (on a keyboard)
for alphabets that are not greek or western

Whether by design or pure random chance
the biology that is man exists here because it is not somewhere else
and the biology that is man (and woman) is as is because it is not other.

If ‘life’ would have developed on another planet in our solar system, it would not be as we know it, and if it has developed ‘elsewhere’ what will it look like and will we even recognise it

We humans would term anything different alien, gosh at times we’ve even termed other humans who had different skin ‘alien’ and the US government still term people of another geographical or political nation ‘aliens’