Guest Week: Yeast is Way Cool Part 2

And now, for the exciting conclusion of Guest Week, SkiBikeJunkie wraps up his Awesome Yeast Series!

Wine consumption dates back almost to the origin of civilization, with the first known wine being produced in what is today Iran. Wine was initially made from wild grapes, but these grapes were soon cultivated and selected to produce a sweeter fruit, which would, incidentally, also yield higher alcohol content when turned into wine.

Grape cultivation originated around the Mediterranean and was a meaningful part of life in ancient Greece and Rome. Each culture had a god of wine, known as Dionysus to the Greeks, and Bacchus to the Romans. The historical wine making regions in Europe today got their start with the Romans, who first cultivated grapes there. After the fall of the Roman empire, the only real social structure in Western Europe was the Catholic church, which maintained the vineyards and wine industry, as it was a key element of the Mass.

Wine was also produced in ancient Egypt, but the preferred drink of the lower classes was beer. Beer has been produced since at least the 6th century B.C., and is again believed to have originated in the Middle East, in this case, what is today, Iraq. Virtually any beverage containing carbohydrates such as starch or sugar will naturally ferment, so it is likely various civilizations invented beer independently. If one considers that the production of beer and bread is believed by many to be responsible for humanity's ability to develop technology and civilization*, beer production is almost like an example of convergent evolution, though unlike photosynthesis, it's something that the species does without it having become part of the genetic code.

*What, you may be wondering, does beer have to do with developing technology and civilization? If folks were just drinking beer all day long, it would be hard to get any real work done, right? Not so fast. Bear in mind that safe drinking water is a relatively recent phenomenon. Beer and wine, with their moderate alcohol content, were safe from pathogens without being overly intoxicating. Wine was often diluted with water, thus providing a safe, mild drink. Beer, moreover, because of it's basis in grains, became not just a safe beverage, but a significant source of calories in many societies. Of course the beer they were drinking wasn't Budweiser, and often resembled a thick soup or gruel more than the clearish, yellow beverage** advertised so heavily during sporting events. So it was more like drinking your bread than it is today.

**Described that way, it's not so appealing.

Beer and wine making both appear to have begun with the use of wild yeasts. In the case of wine, the yeasts naturally occur on the skins of the fruit, so as the grapes are pressed, the yeast naturally becomes part of the juice, enabling the fermentation process. For beer, the process is similar to sourdough, where airborne yeasts were first used, but brewers quickly discovered that reusing the same barrels for fermentation that had been used in the last batch yielded better results. Thus they began cultivating their own yeasts, and using specific barrels (strains) for specific varieties of beer. Similar to breadmaking, the process was refined over the years to derive better, more consistent yeast cultures.

Both beer and wine can be brewed using wild yeasts and some still are today. Many European winemakers insist on using the wild yeasts even though they can cause inconsistent results and sometimes even spoilage in the resulting wine. Lambic beers, produced in Belgium in and around Brussels, are brewed using wild yeasts native to that area. Lambics are often blended with fruit juice or syrups to create a beer with a very distinctive, sweet, fruity flavor. More often than not, however, beer and wine are fermented with cultivated "sugar" yeast, most often S. cerevisiae*, the same stuff bakers are using to make their bread rise, and its cousin, S. uvarum*, the first yeast cell to be isolated back in the 1800's by Emil Hansen at the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark***.

*Almost certainly derived from Ceres, the Roman god of the harvest, which, incidentally, is the same root for the Spanish word "cerveza," meaning "beer."

**Formerly known as S. Carlsbergensis in honor of the brewery at which it was discovered.

***My ancestry is predominately Danish, which makes me feel like I should drink Carlsberg beer in honor of my heritage.

OK, so we've talked a bit about where beer and wine came from and how they came about, but enough of the history lesson already. This is supposed to be a science blog. Let's get to how yeast turns grape juice and cereal into alcohol and carbon dioxide. But since I majored in English and have been racking my brain all week* trying to figure this stuff out, we're going to do the butcher paper and crayons version.

*Seriously, after this one guest post, I have no idea how Watcher does this blog and finds time to ride his bike and finds time to read books to his kids and finds time to go to work and finds time to spend with his awesome wife** because this was seriously a hell of a lot of work***, a far cry from the lunch hour stream of consciousness missives that are the bread and butter of my (pathetic by comparison) blog that may occasionally entertain but never even begins to inform in a meaningful way.

**My family and I have spent time on a few occasions with Watcher, Awesome Wife, and the Trifecta. And as Awesome as Watcher describes AW as being in this blog, it is nowhere near as awesome as she is in real life. The Watcher family is a good bunch of folks.

***And I didn't even bother to put together a single awesome graphic. Seriously, how pathetic am I?

The simple explanation, in language that I understand and using metaphors with which I am well acquainted, is that the yeast eat the sugar in the grape juice/wort/dough/whatever else is being fermented. When they eat the sugar, it gives them a little flatulence, which is CO2, as well as makes them have to pee, which is ethanol. This is a way dumbed-down version, but puts it into terms that make sense to me.

The real, slightly more scientific description of the process is that two steps occur, glycolysis and fermentation. Glycolysis is the process by which one glucose molecule is broken down into two pyruvate molecules, in the process releasing ATP* and NADH, which the yeast cell can use for energy. Glycolysis is considered the archetype of a universal metabolic pathway--glucose as well as most monosaccharides can be converted to intermediates that follow this series of reactions.

*I learned about ATP synthesis in AP biology in 10th grade (I don't remember a thing about it). It's the only biology class I've ever taken, and I somehow got an advanced degree without ever having taken chemistry. Ever. I was able to satisfy the physical science requirement in high school by taking physics, which I should have failed but passed on a technicality. Were it not for that technicality, I would not have graduated high school. Which would have been embarrassing, since I conducted the graduation ceremony.

The pyruvate is then converted to acetylaldehyde and CO2. The NADH produced during glycolysis then reduces the acetylaldehyde to ethanol, leaving ethanol and CO2 as by-products. The ethanol remains in the beverage, which is what makes people feel relaxed when they drink it. The CO2 only dissolves in the beverage if there is an additional fermentation and the container is pressurized to ensure it doesn't escape. Regular wine does not have this second fermentation, but sparkling wine* does. If it is bubbly, the bubbles will make you happy.

*Sparkling wine, like so many culinary wonders, is the result of a happy accident, originally an error on the part of the winemaker. The wine was fermented in conditions that were too cold. It began fermenting in the fall, producing the ethanol. Then it got cold enough during the winter that fermentation ceased, but began again in the spring when temperatures rose, resulting in the second fermentation that led to the dissolved CO2. Until the invention of the wire cage to hold the corks in place, cellaring Champagne was a dangerous prospect, with corks arbitrarily popping, leading to a chain reaction that could destroy an entire cellar of product.

The bubbles in beer may come about as a result of an additional fermentation in the bottle (known as bottle conditioning) or in the cask (known as cask conditioning). They may also be added artificially by injecting CO2 into the finished beer, which is, incidentally, the most common method of making it bubbly*.

*Beer served on tap is typically served from a keg pressurized with CO2. The CO2 pressure forces the beer out of the keg and makes it bubbly at the same time. Nitrogen can also be used to pressurize the keg, so a beer served "on nitro" is using this technique. Since the beer is not cask conditioned in this case and nitrogen does not dissolve in beer, nitro beers will have a head of very fine bubbles but will not have bubbles in the beverage itself.

The same fermentation process occurs in bread dough, with the CO2 forming air pockets that become the holes in baked bread. Since the chemical process is the same, ethanol is also a by product, however, because the bread is then baked, the ethanol evaporates during baking.

Regular, commercial yeast (S. cerevisiae) does not like an acidic, or sour, environment. If bacterial activity creates too much acid, this yeast will die and make your bread taste funny. It will have an ammonia-like aftertaste and a weakened gluten structure. Wild yeasts, on the other hand, prefer an acidic environment, which is why they coexist well with the bacteria in sourdough. The bacteria create lactic and acetic acids, lending the dough its unique flavor, but this process requires about twice as long as the yeast needs to leaven the dough. A hearty yeast strain is needed to endure that long, another reason the wild varieties are preferred to the cultivated yeasts when making sourdough bread.

Punching down dough is a typical part of the bread making process and accomplishes four things: 1) it expels CO2, which would eventually otherwise choke off the yeast; 2) it allows the gluten in the dough to relax a bit; 3) it equalizes the temperature, which is typically higher inside the dough than outside; 4) it redistributes nutrients to the yeast, thereby kicking off a new feeding cycle.

Yeast are hungry critters, but then again so are we. And we wouldn't eat nearly as well as we do without them. So next time you nibble on a crust of bread, make sure and raise a glass to these little fungi that invisibly work to make eating and drinking so much better.

Wow- what a post! And a what a week! Thanks Phil, Kevin and SBJ for an awesome Guest Week!

Guest Week: Yeast is Way Cool Part 1

Today’s guest-poster is none other than the inimitable SkiBikeJunkie. I’m a regular reader of his blog, probably the best-written of Utah’s numerous bike-ski blogs, which covers of course his skiing and biking adventures, but also observations on everything from work to philosophy to school-mom attire. If you haven’t yet checked it out, you should.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a list of things I want to blog about before completing this project. For some time yeast has been on the list, and I’m grateful to SBJ for tackling it in full force with this awesome* 2-part series.

*It not only has tangents, but even a Half-Baked Theory!

The Post

When I told my wife I was doing a guest post about yeast, she informed me that the first thing she thinks of when she hears yeast is yeast infection. I can't imagine she's alone in this. Because she, being quite a skilled baker, should have a lot of interest in yeast aside from the kind that can get a little out of control down there. But even though she's cultivated her own wild yeast for sourdough starter, I guess the discomfort of a yeast infection was what she thought of first. Who can blame her?

Extra detail: Yeast infections are primarily from the Candida genus, hence the name Candidiasis for a yeast infection. They're in the same family as the yeasts used for brewing beer and baking bread but a separate genus (just in case you were starting to feel icky about beer or bread). Candida is a naturally-occurring commensal* in many mammalian species, and a yeast infection is evident not based on the presence of Candida but rather an overgrowth of the yeast. In other words, it's there all the time, it's just that sometimes there's too much of it, it penetrates the mucous membranes, thereby causing irritation. This same annoying yeast is also the cause of diaper rash.

*I didn't know what this word meant either. It's a class of relationship between two organisms wherein one benefits and the other is unaffected. Not to be confused with parasitism, wherein one benefits to the detriment of the other; competition, wherein both are harmed; or mutualism, wherein both benefit. Incidentally, symbiosis and mutualism are often confused. Mutualism is actually a type of symbiosis, as are commensalism and competition. How's that for disambiguation?

Extra, extra detail: Sourdough isn't just yeast, but rather a combination of wild yeast and bacteria. In the case of San Francisco sourdough, the most famous variety, the yeast is typically Candida milleri, and the bacteria is Lactobacillus sanfrancisco, both of which play a unique role. The yeast strengthens the gluten, while the bacteria ferments the maltose in the dough, generating acid in the process and giving the dough its distinctive flavor. Typically the ratio of yeast to bacteria in San Francisco sourdough is ~1:100.

Aside from causing irritation in the most inconvenient of places, yeast is way, way cool. And not just because it makes bread fluffy and beer bubbly, though we'll get to that part too. Culinary applications were, after all, the reason I was interested in this post, but since I learned some cool stuff along the way, we'll use that as background for the culinary uses.

Tangent: The first time I heard about yeast infections was when I was in high school. Not through first-hand experience, but when one of my friend's mom told us about the time her husband was on shore leave from the Navy after six months right when she happened to have a yeast infection. Being the good Navy wife that she was, she didn't tell him about it and just endured the discomfort. I hope she took advantage of a yeast by-product beforehand to distract her from the pain a bit.

Yeast is part of the Fungi kingdom. Baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, was the first eukaryotic organism to have its complete genome sequenced. Unlike many fungi, however, yeasts are single-celled organisms. When I first mentioned doing a post on yeast to Watcher, he mentioned that yeast are cool because they evolved from single-celled to multi-cellular and back to single-celled organisms. I couldn't find any research on the topic, so if you know anything about this, please speak up in the comments.

SPECIAL WATCHER NOTE: I told myself I wouldn’t enhance or edit any guest-posts, but this topic is just too cool to pass up. Yeasts almost certainly evolved from multicellular fungal ancestors, and, like just about everything really cool in nature- from flight to eyes, to tapeda lucida to C4 photosynthesis- have done so multiple times independently, in multiple fungal phyla/sub-phyla. A number of fungal species actually exhibit both yeast and multicellular forms. One particularly insidious example is Penicillium marneffei, a pathogen which afflicts roughly 30% of AIDS patients in Southeast Asia. The switch between P. marneffei hyphal (multicellular) and yeast (unicellular) forms is temperature. At cooler temps it grows hyphally, but at higher temps, such as human body temperature, it grows as a yeast, and this form is the possibly fatal one. There’s actually a word for this switch from hyphal to yeast forms: arthroconidiation.

Anyway, yeast are able to reproduce asexually by budding, but they also create spores in a sac called an asci wherein ascospores are produced which may combine with other ascospores for sexual reproduction.

Yeasts occur naturally as part of the skin, gut, and mucous flora in animals as well as on the skins of fruits. They are also found on plant leaves and flowers, soil, and salt water. They're all over the place, as some are likely growing right now on the surface of the leftovers in your fridge. As these yeasts grow and metabolize food, the character of the food changes, resulting in spoilage (that dry-aged beef that tastes so awesome at the high-end steakhouse tastes so good in part because of a fungus that grows on the exterior during the aging process without spoiling the meat).

Approximately 1500 species of yeast have been described, but this is believed to be less than 1% of yeast species (if you're interested in having a species named after you, identifying and describing a yeast species may be your best opportunity). Yeasts were also one of the first species to be cultivated, which leads to my half-baked theory about grasses, yeast, cattle, and human evolution.

Half-baked theory: humans would not have evolved to be as successful as we are (however successful that is) without grasses, yeast, or cattle (pic left=actual photo of some of SkiBikeJunkie's uncle's herd of cattle). We get a majority of our nutrition--either directly or indirectly--from grass species (rice, wheat, maize, barley, and sugar cane are all grasses). Much of the nutrition we get directly from grass involves yeast in the production. Much of the nutrition we get indirectly from grass, we rely on cattle (or sheep or goats, but primarily cattle) to turn the protein in grass into a form usable by humans.

Humans wouldn't have evolved without grass. And I don't think humans would have used grass as successfully as we have for nutrition without yeast and cattle. Interestingly enough, it's a single yeast species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that's used for making bread, beer, and wine.

Unfortunately, when and how yeast was first cultivated is a mystery, but the first record of its use in bread is from ancient Egypt. We're left to speculate that dough was left out longer than normal on a warm day, the naturally-occurring yeast in the flour was activated, and the bread that was baked was lighter, fluffier, and tastier than the hard, flat cake of the day. Another, equally probable explanation is that the baker used wine or beer as the liquid in bread, likewise resulting in a leavened loaf. Obviously this was something to try and replicate, and the use of yeast in bread making began.

This naturally-occurring yeast could have been used for subsequent loaves by saving some of the old dough, just like a sourdough starter, to begin the leavening process in the new batch. Records show that the use of yeast as a leavening agent occurred in close proximity to the beginning of beer brewing, so it's also possible that the barm* (the foam or scum that results from alcoholic fermentation) from beer brewing could have been used as an early source of yeast for bread making, thus negating the need to use the wild strains.

*Sourdough starter is also known as a barm.

Early bread bakers lacked the benefits of modern microbiology and so would have cultivated their yeast strains based on trial and error. Again, yeast cultivation paralleled brewing, as the yeast cultures often began from the "emptins" or dregs from beer and cider fermentation. These cultures were grown in a medium similar to the wort used when brewing beer, and, interestingly enough, were preserved in a similar manner to keep bacteria from contaminating the cultures by boiling or adding hops to the medium.

Tangent: One of the things I find most interesting about science is that so often it's not used to find new information, but rather to explain why folk wisdom works the way it does. This is especially true in athletic training. Exercise science very rarely comes up with new workout regimens. Instead, it explains why the workout regimens used by successful athletes and coaches are effective. Certainly once the foundation of why something works is established, that technique can be innovated and enhanced, but again, it's more likely that science is catching up by explaining what the top athletes are doing rather than providing them with new ideas.

Yeast production has further evolved into full-scale industrial production, initially with the advent of blocks of fresh yeast, then granulated (dry) yeast, and now instant yeast*.



*If you bake and don't use instant yeast, you should. It makes the step of getting the yeast started in warm water or milk unnecessary. You just mix the yeast into the liquid, flour, and whatever else, and let the dough proof as normal. Way easier.

Different yeast strains have different characteristics that result in different flavors, and artisanal bakers may eschew packaged yeasts in favor of wild yeasts or sourdoughs that lend their bread the desired flavor profile. Similarly, brewers and vintners may select different yeast strains in the production of wine and beer in order to achieve a desired characteristic or facilitate a particular brewing method.

Next up: Yeast in the brewing industry.

Guest Week: The Curious Right-ness of the Universe

Today’s Guest-Poster is long-time reader and commenter Kevin Vigor. Kevin is the only Guest-Poster I haven’t met in real life. But from comments and email correspondence, I feel that I know him reasonably well. Specifically, this is what I know. Like me, he is a cyclist, rationalist and non-native Utahn who lives in Salt Lake City (our children attend the same school) and works in the IT industry. Unlike me, Kevin originates from Gondwanaland. I’m pretty sure he told me once he’s from South Africa. I could be mistaken, but in any event I’m pretty certain it’s one of those Southern hemisphere countries where people talk funny and routinely fight off large reptiles with garden implements.

I mention this because it explains the spelling errors discrepancies peppered throughout his post- favour”, “behaviour”, “fibre”, etc., which I fought off my American spell-checker to leave intact (and which should no doubt please Fellow Funny-Speller P65.)

Kevin’s got a great and timely post. A couple weeks back, when posting about Mars, I mentioned how hard it was for me to get my head around the idea of an entire planet where nothing ever happens. In this post, Kevin takes up that mind-bender at a whole other level: why life- or most anything at all- happens in the universe as a whole. The post isn’t technical, but it does require a bit of focus and attention to follow along, so maybe have a cup of coffee first, answer those couple of urgent work-emails, close your office door, look busy* and dive in.

*I always wear my phone headset when reading good posts, so co-workers will think I’m on the phone.

It also happens to contain probably the brainiest Nested Tangents yet in the history of this blog.

The Post

The universe appears, at first glance, to be a rather inhospitable place. It's mostly empty, bleak and dark, and the few not-empty bits are mostly extremely hot balls of exploding gas, massive unstoppable black holes devouring less fortunate objects, or sad, desolate rocks waiting their turn in the black hole. So it would be easy to conclude that life, clinging precariously to a small blue rock circling a rather undistinguished star, is an astonishing thing, a triumph over unspeakable odds, an inexplicable fly in the dismal broth of infinity.

But it turns out that quite the opposite is true. The universe has stacked the deck in our favour. And not just a little - the game is rigged to an astonishing degree. According to the standard model of physics* the universe has about twenty initial parameters. These are things like the mass of a neutron, the charge on an electron, and so forth. These are the values which determine the behaviour of the cosmos. As far as we know, they were set at the beginning of time and are completely arbitrary. Why aren't electrons the size of baseballs? Well, we don't know of any reason. Nor do we know why they are the size they are. We simply have to measure and observe these parameters. But when we do that, we come to a startling discovery: these initial parameters are very precisely tuned to result in the complex, structured universe that is necessary for life. Even tiny deviations in any of these parameters would lead to conditions where we, or life as we can envision it**, could not exist.

*I love this name; I envision a worn-down universe salesman wearily trying to sell add-ons to the suave and dapper creator: how about the moon roof? Nope, says the creator, picking lint from his lapel, just the standard model. C'mon, buddy, how about the power ashtrays? Nope, just the standard model.

**In a paper regarding the possibility of false vacuum collapse, which would result in an instant reshuffling of those initial parameters of the universe, we find this lovely quote: "...in the new vacuum there are new constants of nature; after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it. However, one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time the new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been eliminated."

For instance, consider the 'alpha' parameter (also known by the far more mellifluous name 'fine structure constant'). Alpha describes (in some manner far beyond the understanding of your humble author) the strength of the electromagnetic field, i.e. the force exerted between charged particles like protons and electrons. It is a dimensionless constant; like pi, no matter what units of measurement you use, the value is identical.

Tangent: I find the idea of dimensionless universal constants like alpha and pi fascinating. It wobbles the mind to realize that any intelligent life anywhere in the universe knows the value of pi and would recognize it if we presented it to them. It's quite literally universal truth.

Nested Tangent: It is interesting to contemplate how one would go about presenting the value of pi to an alien intelligence, presumably as a demonstration of our own intelligence. It's easy enough to communicate integers; assuming we had a simple on-off blinking mechanism like a light we can simply transmit bursts of flashes separated in time. But pi, being irrational, is harder to communicate. '3' isn't exactly precise enough to get the job done and I cannot think of any way to communicate irrational numbers over such a limited channel without introducing the concept of the numeric base. As I'm sure you know, dear reader, we are accustomed to using base ten in our daily counting needs, but there is no reason to suppose an alien would use such a system. So first we would have to communicate the base we are using. Having thought about this a bit, I came up with the following scheme: transmit the prime number sequence, which again should be universally recognizable, using a longer interval to separate the values and a shorter interval to separate the digits in each base-ten number. So, with space representing the long interval and dash the short, we would transmit: * ** *** ***** ******* *-* *-*** (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13...). This should unambiguously establish the fact that we are using base ten. With that established one could then begin transmitting the digits of pi in base ten (*** * **** * *****....) with some certainty of being understood. OK, perhaps that was interesting only to me, but if you can think of a better or more universal way to communicate irrational numbers to aliens I'd be delighted to hear it.

Of course, we know many ways to derive the value of pi (including the incredibly freaky BBP Algorithm, which lets you calculate any digit of pi without calculating the preceding digits - think on that a moment!) and we cannot envision a reality in which the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference is any different. Unfortunately, we have no idea how to calculate alpha, but can only measure it, and can easily envision universes in which it had a value different than the approximately 1/137* that it is in ours.

*Richard Feynman, the most entertaining physicist ever, had this to say about alpha: "It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the "hand of God" wrote that number, and we don't know how He pushed his pencil." He wasn't the only one fascinated by the number, either; Sir Arthur Eddington, a preeminent astrophysicist at the turn of the 20th century, constructed long numerological arguments to "prove" that alpha was exactly 1/136. When experiment revealed the actual value was close to 1/137 he hastily reformulated his arguments to "prove" it was precisely 1/137. Alas, truth refused to be quite so neat.

So - what would a universe with a different fine structure constant look like? To understand at least one ramification of this, we must consider the structure of an atomic nucleus. In the nucleus of anything more massive than hydrogen there is a desperate struggle of forces: the positively charged protons repel each via the electromagnetic force, while the strong nuclear force tries to hold them together. So if alpha, which indicates the strength of the electromagnetic field, were larger, the protons would repel each other more strongly, and in the absence of a corresponding increase in the strong nuclear force (another of those pesky initial universe parameters) the atomic nuclei become more unstable. In our universe, elements with up to about 92 protons in the nucleus (uranium) are reasonable stable; but with only a very small increase in alpha no element except hydrogen can exist for any length of time.

So even small increases in the value of alpha spell disaster for life, unless you fancy the idea of trying to assemble sentience armed only with varying densities of hydrogen.

What then, you might ask, if alpha were to have a lesser value?
It probably won't surprise you that the answer to that is disaster also, though of a more subtle form. One must consider that the electromagnetic force has another enemy: gravity. Stars burn because gravity becomes strong enough to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion between hydrogen nuclei, fusing them together into helium (and by happy coincidence releasing an enormous amount of energy in the process). So if alpha were less, gravity would be relatively stronger, and smaller bodies would burst into flame, their puny electromagnetic resistance crushed under the iron heel of gravity. One doesn't have to dial alpha down very much before Earth-sized bodies start igniting, which makes things hard on the inhabitants. Worse, the lifetime of the resulting tiny stars is dramatically shorter than the stars we know, curtailing the time available for life to evolve. In short, the resultant universe isn't very conducive to the creation of pizza, carbon fibre bikes, and all the other things we take as requirements of sentient life*.

*There are numerous other subtle and awful effects of dialing down alpha: "Just Six Numbers" by Martin Rees does a fantastic job of explaining just what a bad idea that would be, in case you were inclined to give it a try.

So it turns out alpha is very nicely tuned to support just the kind of universe we need, one with lots of stable elements and stars which burn long enough for us to evolve.

And it turns out that the rest of those twenty-odd initial parameters I mentioned before? Yeah, same story all over. Even the most tiny of tweaks to something like electron mass is pure ruination. This universe looks an awful lot like it was set up at the very beginning just exactly for us.

The first guy to comment on this was an American physicist by the name of Robert Dicke, who pointed out what came to be known as "Dicke's Coincidence"* in the 1950s. But the first guys I know of who really ran with the idea were John Barrow and Frank Tipler, in their 1986 book, "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle". It's well worth reading (though be warned that while most of it is layman friendly there are passages of heavy math that left me bewildered) - they devote an amazing amount of effort to demonstrating just how fine-tuned the universe is to support our existence, and to my knowledge those conclusions have held up well, in the sense that most cosmologists agree (though of course, there are still some who differ**). After demonstrating at considerable length the unlikelihood of our cosmos, they then turn their attention to the obvious question: Why do we find ourselves in such an unlikely place? Here, things get a lot more contentious.

*insert puerile snigger here.

**Barrow and Tipler base many of their arguments on the processes that lead to formation of carbon, which is certainly essential for life as we know it, and which is indeed very sensitive to the initial conditions of the universe, but some contrarians accuse them of 'carbon chauvinism' and suggest other forms of life might arise in differently tuned universes.

Barrow and Tipler offer three variants of the 'anthropic principle'. The Weak Anthropic Principle is really a simple little tautology of the sort a fifth grader might find clever: if the universe *weren't* tuned to support life, we wouldn't be here to observe it; therefore, we should not be surprised to see it, no matter how unlikely it might be. It's certainly a difficult argument to refute, but it is very unsatisfying. Further, it requires either a massive and unlikely (Dicke's) coincidence* to explain how the one and only universe just happened to be so awesome, or else that there be a very large number, perhaps an infinity, of different universes with different parameters. Some credible cosmologists (like Martin Rees) posit this latter theory, commonly referred to as the multiverse theory. They suggest that the vast majority of many, many parallel universes are lifeless, sterile places, but that the sheer number of them explains the coincidence of ours. Such people thus find the Weak Anthropic Principle sufficient. But not Barrow and Tipler**. They keep on going to our next stop, the Strong Anthropic Principle.

*More puerile sniggering.

**Nor, for that matter, do I. While I am hardly qualified to have a real opinion on the subject, invoking the enormous elaboration of an infinity of parallel universes just so we can have ours seems such a shockingly inelegant, brute force solution that I can hardly bear to contemplate it. I prefer my cosmology with just a tad more grace, thanks all the same.

The Strong Anthropic Principle states that a universe, any universe, *must* at some point contain life. Proponents of this position usually point to quantum mechanics, where observers play a special, magic, spooky role. Schrodinger's cat is both alive, and dead, and neither, until someone looks in the box. And observers, we assume, must be alive, and probably sentient at that. So we know that the mere presence of life alters the behaviour of reality in a very deep and very non-obvious way. It is possible, then, that the universe cannot function properly without observers, and so therefore that it must produce us, or not exist at all.

This argument is quite compelling, but it has its flaws. First, it is not universally accepted that observers really do have such a magic privileged role in reality. Heisenburg's interpretation of quantum mechanics (usually wrongly called the Copenhagen interpretation) grants us this exalted status, but there are many other interpretations, some of which do not. Second, and perhaps more seriously, it simply defers the question. Sure, a universe cannot exist without us - but how did it manage to come to be? We should not be surprised to find ourselves in a universe well suited to ourselves, the Strong Anthropic Principle says, but feel free to continue to be astonished that a universe exists at all.
This turns out to be insufficient to satisfy Barrow and Tipler, so they press on, arriving at what they term the Final Anthropic Principle. Which is, in a word, creationism. They spend a lot of time dancing around it, but in they end, they strongly suggest that the existence of our unlikely universe is evidence of an intelligent creator (others following in their path are less reticent).
Well. That's a damn unsatisfying result. What a long way we've come, how carefully we've studied and observed and measured and reasoned, only to defer explanation to a magic fairy? The whole thing feels like cheating. It's worse than an M. Night Shyamalan movie*.

*Spoiler - it's the trees!

But what's the counter argument? What, other than some intelligent creator, can possibly explain the beautiful, delicate balance of a universe where carbon and oxygen not only exist, they come together in the form of J boats and whiskey and Angela Gossow and other exquisite delights?

Well, Lee Smolin is glad you asked. In his 1997 book, The Life of the Cosmos, Mr. Smolin suggests a wonderful, elegant alternative. The book is in many ways horrible - Mr. Smolin is not a terribly gifted author, often didactic, and the book feels like several unrelated pieces awkwardly jammed together, some of which were written for an audience far smarter than I ("now, as you recall from your exhaustive knowledge of gauge theory..."). But despite that I cannot recommend it enough, purely for the sheer wonder of the central idea. It's so lovely and so novel that I feel bad giving it away here. But just to give you a hint...

[SPOILER ALERT]

Smolin's central idea is that the constants of nature evolved by a process of natural selection. Just as natural selection in biology led to the beautiful and wildly diverse life we find about ourselves, so did a process of cosmological natural selection lead to our bizarre and wonderful universe. I cannot possibly do the argument justice here - it involves universes spawning though black holes and every time I try to explain it it sounds completely unbelievable. But then so does the germ theory of disease - you mean there are little living things that are too small to see? And they're everywhere? And if they get in me, they make my nose run? Dude, are you even trying to be reasonable here? Trust me, Smolin does a better job of making the idea plausible. Compelling, even.

So, if Alex is fool enough to publish this, and I've managed to pique your interest in the rather insignificant matter of why the hell we're here, get to the library and grab a copy of Smolin's book. It's an adventure for your mind, a triumph of rationalism, and with the weather apparently determined to keep us indoors the next week or so, you'll have the time on your hands.

Guest Week: All About Phil’s Yard

It’s Guest Week at Watching the World Wake Up. The Watcher Family is in Mexico this week, so 3 regular readers are filling in for me while I’m away. Today Phil O. blogs about his yard, tomorrow Kevin Vigor blogs about the universe, and Wednesday and Thursday* SkiBikeJunkie brings us a Yeast Tour-de-Force.

*There’s no Friday post. Blog traffic is always light Fridays and weekends. These guys went to a lot of work to do this for me; I’m giving them the high-traffic days.

Remember 2 things while I’m away: First, our other brother, Ray, is staying at the house. He brought that damn dog of his along again, so be careful if you stop by the house unannounced this week. Second, I get back late Sunday night, then embark Monday AM on another trip- the 2nd of 3 this month- so posting will continue to be sporadic.

Today’s Guest-Poster is- as perceptive longtime readers may have already discerned- my little brother*. He’s like me except that a) he’s nicer, more interesting and more fun- seriously, if you’re going to invite one of us to a party, pick him b) his eyesight sucks. The guy is like blind as a bat, and c) he’s not an OCD-outdoorhead.

*Have you noticed that when an older brother introduces a younger brother, he refers to him as his “little brother”, but when the younger brother introduces himself, he uses the term “younger brother?”

The Post

Hi all. It’s an honor to be asked to guest-post at Watching the World Wake Up. I’ve been following this blog since its inception several years ago, and while I’ll admit to only understanding 30% of it, that’s more than I understand about Lost over a similar period of time.* I look forward to new posts to learn more about the world around me, see cool helmet-cam videos, and of course check to see if I’m referenced in any tangents. Over the course of my life, I’ve learned many things from the Watcher, like how to perform basic maintenance on a 10-speed, how to interview successfully for a job, and how to be a new Dad who stays in the good graces of a new Mom (short version: get up at night when the baby cries). Reading Watching the World Wake Up gives me the chance to continue my education.

*Seriously, she hits her head and forgets how to speak English? Didn’t our collective ability to suspend disbelief for that kind of thing go out with Anna Anderson and/or every season of General Hospital?

Before I go much further, I should introduce myself. Yes, I am the Watcher’s younger, better-looking brother. It’s true. However, if you imply that I got this guest-hosting job through some sort of nepotism a la Robert F. Kennedy or Kim Jong Il, I want to assure you that this was purely a merit-based appointment, like Melissa Rivers or Liz Cheney. If you maintain otherwise, I will sue you for libel in Singapore.

You’ve learned a lot about the Watcher over the years. He lives in the West, he’s a fiercely competitive biker, he works in sales, he has an Awesome Wife and a flock of good-looking children. He also has a keen interest in and understanding of the natural world around him. I’m just like him, except I haven’t gotten on a bike since 1992,* I live in the suburbs of a large northeastern city (not the one in the photo – the other one), and I detest sales reps. I do, however, have my own Awesome Wife – an attorney who specializes in affordable housing – and we have our own Alpha Baby, a girl born last October. I currently keep busy with work, which takes me to Canada far too often (not that I mind – it’s a pretty nice place), and with school, pursuing my MBA part-time (I have a slightly higher tolerance for school than some members of my family).

*I biked a lot from 1987-1990. I probably have gotten on a bike once or twice since 1992, but only in a limited sense; I definitely haven’t ridden two consecutive days since 1991. As a teenager, I did some serious biking, participating in summer trips down the entire West coast (Seattle to San Diego), for example. I was in good shape and I made some great friendships (Mike Rock, where are you now?) and developed crushes on several good-looking athletic women (whom I periodically stalk nowadays – thank you, Facebook). I really enjoyed biking. But I figured out pretty quickly that a car gave a high school boy a huge advantage when it came to dating. Basically, girls did not want to get picked-up by guys on bikes, or guys whose parents were driving the car to the movie theater. So long, bike.

Unfortunately for devoted readers of this blog, I can’t add to my brother’s significant expertise in the natural world around us. If I wanted to focus on things in which I have expertise, I’d be writing about obscure 1970s bands, obscure 19^th-century Presidents, or eras of English history most Americans have never heard of. But I don’t want to lose all of the Watcher’s loyal readers in one fell swoop. Instead, as a relatively new suburban homeowner, I thought I’d talk about the principle way in which most suburbanites interact with nature: in their yards.

The Watcher and I grew up in New England, but like my brother, I moved away after college. I lived first in New York City, and then – after tricking my Philadelphia-raised girlfriend into marrying me – in central California, home of Steinbeck and K-Fed, south of Fresno and north of the most depressing place on earth, which is a good topic for a future guest post (if I ever get the opportunity, and I am not too busy being a highly sought-after guest-blogger on other popular blogs). Finally, in 2008 we decided to move back to New England, and bought a small Cape on a half-acre of land in a charming town of ~30,000.

Now, the nice thing about my house – apparent from the photo here – is that we border on a large area of protected woodland. In fact, I’m not really sure where my property line ends, although if you bushwhack a hundred yards or so, you will hit a well-traveled trail, so I’m assuming it ends before that. (If it doesn’t, I should setup a little tollbooth to help pay my property taxes). There are a lot of nice things about bordering on the woods, including:

- Great scenery in all year round (see photos from various seasons)

- No neighbors peering into our house at night (well, at least we hope not)

- Easy, relatively green-friendly way to get rid of yard waste (leaves, weeds, etc.)

- Occasional glimpses of wildlife (rabbits, deer)

There are downsides, too:

- While leaf disposal is easy, we get an extra large share of leaves dropped on the lawn each fall

- The woods are regularly encroaching on the yard and need near-constant taming – vines, branches, plenty of weeds, etc.

- Those glimpses of deer aren’t without inconveniences. Minor inconvenience: cleaning-up occasional deer scat. Major inconvenience: contracting Lyme disease less than a month after moving in, after a day spent valiantly clearly six-foot high weeds next to the garage. (Fear not, gentle reader, for I was cured after my first trip to the ER in 20+ years and a round of antibiotics).

Finally, and this has been on my mind the last few days, we’ve got a small stream running underground in the wooded part of our yard; it’s mainly noticeable in the spring. But after a deluge like the two that have hit the northeast in the last month (see these photos from a nearby town, although our town was not quite as badly affected), the stream turns into a pond that starts to swallow-up our lawn. The pond recedes once the rain stops, but it looks as if it is slowly sinking the back third of our yard, something I’m reminded of each time I mow the lawn. Last summer, after a spate of similar rains, a soft spot in the lawn swallowed-up half of my leg one sunny day; I’ll step more carefully this spring.

The yard is one thing; I worry more about our house. Our house was built in the 1950s, and – unusual for these parts –it was built on a slab. That’s right: no basement. A slab has some pros and cons. Pro: It keeps the house cooler in the summer. Con: It keeps the house cooler in the winter, too. Con: I miss the storage space. Pro: It never floods – a big deal in a month like this past one. That’s nice, but according to an elderly neighbor, the reason our house was built on a slab was because the original builder (50+ years ago) couldn’t figure out how to dig a foundation and still keep the water out (even under normal conditions). Now, the builder may just not have been too adept – as far as I can tell, all of my neighbors have basements – or he may not have wanted to deal with seasonal flooding. But when it rains like this, I do get to wondering what’s flowing underground, and whether it’s “hollowing-out” beneath our little Cape on a slab. If it rains enough, will the house sink into the ground like my old high school, old Seattle, or the cities and statues in that planet full of ape-men?

Anyway, this is all leading up to me realizing that, as a suburbanite with a house and a yard, I tend to view the local ecosystem as both a source of beauty – green lawns, tall trees, leaves changing in the fall, cute bunnies on my lawn - but more often as a threat and a nuisance: flooding, ticks, deer poop, etc. This is probably the standard suburbanite paradox: We want to be out of the cities so we can get “fresh” air for ourselves and our families, away from traffic and sun-blocking buildings, but we don’t want to be so far away that we can’t easily get pizza delivered, too. We want green “natural” lawns (although of course they’re totally unnatural) but we also want to be within driving distance of Lowes or Home Depot so we can buy fertilizer and weed-killer. Finally, given our commutes and dual-career families, we don’t actually spend much time in those yards. They are basically ornamental. But how many ornaments require so much work? (“The tragedy of your times, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want.”)

Well, all of this makes me realize that it’s time to get out and start cleaning-up the yard while my daughter is napping.

Before I wrap-up, I want to thank the Watcher for temporarily handing the reins to me today. While I know my entry is only about 0.00001% as educational or interesting as a standard Watcher post, it’s flattering to be allowed to participate in this great series. Thank you, Watcher. It’s a little like growing up under the same roof, when he lent me his motorcycle jacket, his collection of 60s LPs, or his Epiphone guitar, all of which I eventually sold and did not share the profits with him. Watcher, I can finally say: I’m sorry. If you want the Gibson IV bass guitar I bought in 1989 and haven’t played since 1991 and haven’t sold despite my wife’s repeated entreaties, just let me know.

*Another valuable lesson from high school: Owning a bass guitar, regardless of one’s ability to play, is a great way to get asked to join local bands. Even as an adult, every Tom, Dick, and Harry has an electric guitar or a drum set; far fewer have bass guitars.

SPECIAL WATCHER NOTE: Really? My brown motorcycle jacket? I have been looking for that thing for like 20 years…