Sublime

However, they found that that stipulation barely made a difference; the theory complemented with the anthropic principle ended up predicting a universe with just one galaxy—ours—and nothing in any way resembling a universe teeming with galaxies like the one we observe.

Quantum experiments demonstrated that electrons exist simultaneously in an infinite array of possibilities or probabilities in an invisible field of energy.

Walker thinks that our understanding of life, as a phenomenon, is right now where we were with gravity before Newton. We can describe what we see, but we have no sense of the underlying principles—we just see an apple falling to the ground. She thinks that without a theory, a deeper understanding of what life is, the search for it beyond Earth is

If those molecules bump together and form something more complex, on and on, Cronin said, “that is the selection equivalent of gravity. And that process of complexity generates everything we have in the universe that’s associated with life.”

Virtually the entire scientific community agrees: the problem of life’s origin is unsolved.