Why anthropic reasoning cannot predict Lambda

Details Why anthropic reasoning cannot predict Lambda Why anthropic reasoning cannot predict Lambda

2006-07-11

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0607227v2

Phys.Rev.Lett. 97 (2006) 201301

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

4 pages, 1 figure. Discussion slighlty expanded, refs added, conclusions unchanged. Matches published version

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.201301

We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an explicit example, we show that weighting different universes by the total number of possible observations leads to an extremely small probability for observing a value of Lambda equal to or greater than what we now measure. We conclude that anthropic reasoning within the framework of probability as frequency is ill-defined and that in the absence of a fundamental motivation for selecting one weighting scheme over another the anthropic principle cannot be used to explain the value of Lambda, nor, likely, any other physical parameters.

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