It's possible that our universe wasn't specifically designed to support life as we know it, but is merely one of many possible universes, and ours happens to 'work.' This, according to some atheists, is supposedly a rebuttal to the claim of scientist-theologians that the fine-tuning of our universe suggests the hand of a Designer.
(The atheists generally brush under the rug the question posed by the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne: If in fact there are multiple universes, that's all well and good, but then where did they come from?)
Hacker News points us to Dark flow: Proof of another universe? by Amanda Gefter, New Scientist, Jan. 22, 2009. Here's an excerpt:
Kashlinsky, a senior staff scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, .... and colleagues have clocked galaxy clusters racing at up to 1000 kilometres per second - far faster than our best understanding of cosmology allows. Stranger still, every cluster seems to be rushing toward a small patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.
Kashlinsky and his team claim that their observation represents the first clues to what lies beyond the cosmic horizon. Finding out could tell us how the universe looked immediately after the big bang or if our universe is one of many. Others aren't so sure. One rival interpretation is that it is nothing to do with alien universes but the result of a flaw in one of the cornerstones of cosmology, the idea that the universe should look the same in all directions. That is, if the observations withstand close scrutiny.
(Emphasis added.)
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