Life on Earth: An Accident?

Modern Mathematics Lecture Series

Time

Wednesday, 16:00-17:00

April 16, 2025

Venue

Lecture Hall C548

Shuangqing Complex Building A

清华大学双清综合楼A座C548报告厅

Zoom Meeting ID: 271 534 5558

Passcode: YMSC

Speaker

Ulf-G. Meißner

University of Bonn & FZJ

Ulf-G. Meißner is a W3 professor for theoretical physics at Bonn University and head of the TH group at the HISKP. He is also a director at the Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-4) at Forschungszentrum Jülich. He was the dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Bonn University, from 2008 to 2016.

Selected Research topics

· nuclear structure and reactions

· hadron spectrum and hadronic reactions

· effective field theories for axion coupled to matter

· strangeness nuclear physics

· nuclear lattice EFT

· electric dipole moments of hadrons and nuclei

· soliton models in hadron and nuclear physics

Personal Website

www.itkp.uni-bonn.de/~meissner/

About the lecture 

Life on Earth: An Accident?

Abstract

The elements are generated in the Big Bang and in stars. In these reactions, a number of fine tunings appear, which have often been interpreted in the context of the anthropic principle. In this talk, I discuss a different view point and will answer the question: How much are the fundamental parameters of the Standard Model constrained by the abundances of the elements that are required to make life on Earth possible?