A fundamental question which I discuss in my article is the question of why the speed of light, and indeed all the other physical constants have the particular values that they do, and could those values be different? Much about our world, including the existence of life itself would be impossible if we were to change the values of the constants even slightly, a problem that physicists call the "fine-tuning" of the standard model parameters of physics. The set of all the possible values of the physical constants is what physicists call the "Parameter Space", and on the surface, if all parameter values are regarded as equally likely, only a small fraction of the parameter space seems to include the constants necessary for life.
In this graphic, we represent the Parameter Space schematically as a 2-Dimensional plane, even though, in reality, the parameter space has as many values as there are true physical constants, which certainly number more than 2. Smolin's model challenges the traditional notion of a parameter space where all possible values are equally likely and shows how our particular parameter values could become exponentially favored by Cosmological Natural Selection. As shown in this graphic, there may be many possible "islands" of life in the paramter space, but the island that contains our constants is among the most probable, because it makes the production of black holes much more likely than most other choices of parameters.
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