Author notes

COINCIDENCE TWELVE: QUANTUM OF SCIENCE or SOMETIMES BOHR-ING IS GOOD

alschroeder

on May 18, 2014

"If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."–Neil Bohr. More of his witty sayings here.
Also, Max Planck demonstrated if electrons circled a nucleus, in a non-quantum atom, they'd be particles moving through an electric field and would emit photons which would cause the electron to spiral in—effectively destroying the atom in a short while. It was he who first proposed quanta for atomic-scale energies, but Bohr took it much further, as did Heisenberg and others.
There's a lot more to quantum theory, and it plays into the possibility of life in numerous ways—ultraviolet catastrophe, anyone? But this is the most direct effect on life. Without a consistent chemistry, there can't be a consistent biochemistry. You can't have reliable reproduction, either, if every atom is as variable as every solar system is in space. Without reliable reproduction, evolution is IMPOSSIBLE, because it depends on selection pressure on successive generations. So even by some miracle you got some sort of lifeform, it would never reproduce or evolve.
This one's a little different from some previous coincidences. It's not so much the numerical value of it (unless we look at the value of Planck's constant, which this is a multiple of) but that atomic reality is different from macroscopic space, due to the "graininess" inherent in quantum theory. If atoms behaved (albeit in a smaller scale) the same way as solar systems, varying as much as our solar system from Sirius' solar system, there would be no elements, per se, no consistent chemistry at all. Which means no life, unless energy-beings are possible. Even then…hmmm, maybe I SHOULD have exlained the "ultraviolet catastrophe".
I could do more coincidences, but I think I've made my point. So…
Next: An analogy of why an explanation is needed…in front of the Firing Squad. (Courtesy of John Leslie.) After that–possible explanations for all these coincidences.