If a tree falls...

[smc]

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

... Or my favorite... There are several physical constants that must be just right to permit life to exist in the universe. ...

That is, "life" as humans define it. This is not meant to be argumentative, only to point out that such a question by its very nature includes assumptions that, under some circumstances (including ones that we may not even be capable of thinking of), may simply be wrong.

One simply needs to consider the work of Craig Venter, the man behind the private endeavor to decode the human genome. His team has been trying to strip down an organism called M. genitalium to its bare essential to see what it requires to survive. They have been working with genome transplant that in theory, at least their theory, constitute creating "life." Other scientists (e.g., the biophysicist David Deamer at UC-Santa Cruz) call what Venter has been doing the production of a "radically engineered organism" that is not new life.

Thus, we see that what "life" means cannot even be agreed to with respect to the human genome project.

[TracyCoxx]

When people talk about radically different life, they talk about organisms that make use of organic compounds like arsenic, or DNAless life but with some other mechanism that achieves the same thing. Maybe not even carbon based, but silicon base. If any life could exist in the kinds of environments I'm talking about - i.e. a solar systemless universe, or a universe that only lasts a few million years or less (giving little time to evolve), or even an atomless universe it would be several orders of magnitude beyond radically different life.

But who knows, there may be parameters of subatomic particles that can be tweaked to create something just as ingenious as an atom. But for the context of what I'm talking about, it doesn't really matter what kind of life it is or how radical. Whatever life form it is, makes observations that determine quantum states, and the question of physically what does it take to make an observation still remains.

Well I'm outta here... I'm going to Florida to watch the last launch of Endeavour .... it's a bittersweet feeling /

[The Conquistador]

How about a more contemporary version aw?

If I drop a log in the toilet, does it make a splash?