Albert Einstein said there are two ways to live life: (A) Nothing is a miracle (B) Everything is a miracle. Life depends on carbon, the only element that can form complex molecules like DNA, but carbon only exists because of a fine balance in nature. Hydrogen, also essential, exists only because neutrons are slightly heavier than protons. If it were the reverse, there would be no hydrogen. The universe also had to expand at just the right rate for life to get started and evolve to us. Dr. Michael Albrow will discuss many other examples of how certain physical conditions, which didn't have to be true, are exactly what we need to be living, conscious beings. Was this by design, or do we just live in a "Goldilocks universe" that is just right to support our existence?

Professor Michael Albrow is a Scientist Emeritus at Fermilab and a Fellow of the American Physical Society for outreach and education. After earning his Ph.D. from Manchester University on 1969 he spent 18 years doing research at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and was a professor at Stockholm University before joining Fermilab near Chicago in 1991. He was on the teams that discovered the two heaviest known particles, the top quark at Fermilab and the Higgs boson (“the God particle”) at CERN. He is the author of a new book Space Times Matter – One hundred short stories about the universe and with artist Shanthi Chandrasekar Singularities and infinities, having held science and art exhibitions at the American University, the Cosmos Club and the Kennedy Center’s Reach. Michael Albrow lives in Reston.