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Sometimes physics can make you feel a little insignificant.

You know, the Earth isn't the center of the universe.

It's just one of many tiny rocks orbiting countless

suns and zillions of galaxies. And the universe has existed for billions of years before we came

along, happily doing its thing without us. But sometimes physics can also make us feel

quite special. When we look at the laws of nature and the values of its constants,

life seems to depend very strongly on these little details. A tiny tweak here or a change there

and life as we know it would be impossible. Stephen Hawking said, quote, the laws of science,

as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size

of the electric charge of the electron or the ratio of the masses of the proton and the

electron. The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely

adjusted to make possible the development of life." End quote.

Is Hawking right?

Can it physics tell us if we're special?

Can it reveal if the universe seems to have been set up so that life can exist?

Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinarily important universe.

Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites and space, and I'm so glad that the universe is fine-tuned for life, including parasitic life.

Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist. I want to unravel the nature of the universe so we know

who to blame for including parasites in it. You know, we should blame someone for human and livestock and

pet parasites. If I could selectively remove those, I would. Right.

Yeah.

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