#seren

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics". To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life. ↗

— Paul Davies

#chance #coincidence #fine-tuning #fred-hoyle #id

It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for. ↗

— Lois McMaster Bujold

#serendipity #writing #writing-process #bizarre

I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB. ↗

— Desmond Tutu

#after #die #ever #felt #going

Smiling always with a never fading serenity of countenance, and flourishing in an immortal youth. ↗

— Isaac Barrow

#countenance #fading #flourishing #immortal #never

I am very willing to share whatever I know or feel I know about finding some serenity in this lifetime. ↗

— Dirk Benedict

#am #feel #finding #i #i am

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is. ↗

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

#meditation #serenity #spirituality #beauty

You know being relevant or coming up with something interesting, funny to say about what's current is just as hard as it might ever be depending on the serendipity of it all. ↗

— Lily Tomlin

#being #coming #current #depending #ever

Journey with me to a true commitment to our environment. Journey with me to the serenity of leaving to our children a planet in equilibrium. ↗

— Paul Tsongas

#children #commitment #environment #equilibrium #journey

Tea does our fancy aid, Repress those vapours which the head invade, And keeps that palace of the soul serene. ↗

— Edmund Waller

#does #fancy #head #invade #keeps

But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave. ↗

— William Wordsworth

#bright #grave #lead #lovely #night