I attended a public lecture at Queen's Univ. last year in which a professor (from Cambridge I think) gave a lecture entitled "The improbability of the formation of life" or something to that effect.

In it, he showed how precisely the forces are balanced, how if the distribution of matter/anitmatter came out different we would not have come to exist. He would close each argument saying, "if such_and_such had been different, then life would not have formed. TOO BAD" then at the conclusion of his presentation, he adds up all his "TOO BADs" and shows that the probabability of life forming is exceedingly small.

So basically he argues as follows:
If the universe had followed a SLIGHTLY different path in its development, we would not be here. But my question is the following: if it had to all happen again, how do we know the exact same path would not be followed? Maybe this is the way things must come out, as governed by the laws of physics.

It's a little like a game of PLINKO on the Price is Right. Knowing the exact momemtum of the chip when it strikes each peg, we could figure out the path its going to take. It's 'not really random' as another thread suggests.

So my question is:

If we could set up a model of the early universe, could we show that the laws of physics would develop exactly as they for us, out of physical necessity? Or would a different set of laws come about?

dvst8