Quark mass and congeniality to life The anthropic principle In physics and cosmology, the anthropic principle is the collective name for several ways of asserting that the observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the life observed in it. The principle was formulated as a response to a series of observations that the laws of nature and its fundamental physical constants remarkably take on values that are consistent with conditions for life as we know it rather than a set of values that would not be consistent with life as observed on Earth. The anthropic principle states that this apparent coincidence is actually a necessity because living observers would not be able to exist, and hence, observe the universe, were these laws and constants not constituted in this way.
Jenkins's contributions To test this hypothesis,
Robert Jaffe, Jenkins, and Itamar Kimchi used models to "tweak" the values of the
quark masses and examined how that would affect the ability of stable isotopes of
carbon and
hydrogen to form, making
organic chemistry possible. They found that, within the various potential universes they examined, many had very different qualities from our own, but that nonetheless life could still develop. In some cases, where forms of carbon we find in our universe were unstable, other forms of stable carbon were identified as possible. The work by Jaffe, Jenkins, and Kimchi on anthropic constraints on quark masses was highlighted by the
American Physical Society's
Physics magazine. That work, along with research by other theorists on the possibility of an anthropically-allowed "
weakless universe", was summarized in
Scientific American magazine's January 2010 cover story, which Jenkins co-authored with Israeli particle physicist
Gilad Perez. Jenkins also explained his work in a 2015 appearance on the TV show
Through the Wormhole.
Self-oscillation and thermodynamics Jenkins's review of the physics of
self-oscillators was published by
Physics Reports in 2013. Jenkins has also collaborated with mathematical physicist
Robert Alicki and theoretical chemist David Gelbwaser-Klimovsky on applying related ideas in order to arrive at a better understanding of
non-equilibrium thermodynamics and
quantum thermodynamics, with a particular application to the microscopic physics of
solar cells and the
triboelectric effect. With experimentalist
Elizabeth von Hauff they have also presented a new model of the pumping of electrical charge in
batteries. ==See also==