What is the anthropic principle?
In: Physics
It’s the principle that experimental observations happen in universes capable of supporting human life (or more generally, intelligent life), since without that no experiment would occur in the first place.
One example: concluding that planets should have an atmosphere with oxygen, because that’s all humans notice. Of course, this is disproven if humans send probes to Venus or Mars.
Or another: why is this universe three-dimensional spatially, with specific values for the gravitational constant and fine structure constant and other parameters, when slightly adjusting any of that would mean the universe would be a very different place? Well, in those universes, there wouldn’t be intelligent lifeforms to study the universe because those lifeforms couldn’t evolve on planets that form around stars.
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