Queen Mary Physicists Argue Universe's Constants Are Tuned for Life — at the Cellular Level

A team of physicists at Queen Mary University of London has put forward a striking new claim about the so-called fine-tuning of the universe: that the values of nature's fundamental constants sit within an extraordinarily narrow range required not just for stars and atoms, but for fluids inside living cells to flow at all. The argument, summarized in a Queen Mary press release on May 8, 2026, builds on a series of papers led by Professor Kostya Trachenko and colleagues and published in the journal Science Advances.

The team's central insight is that the dynamic viscosity of liquids — including water, blood, and intracellular fluids — depends sensitively on the values of constants such as the Planck constant, the elementary charge, the electron mass and the proton mass. Trachenko's group has shown that across a vast family of "what if" universes, only a thin sliver of parameter space yields liquids with the kind of viscosity needed for diffusion-driven biology. "If water was as viscous as tar, life would not exist in its current form," Trachenko said. Slightly tuned-up viscosity would slow molecular transport so much that cells could not metabolize; slightly tuned-down viscosity would prevent the cohesive structures cells rely on.

The Queen Mary work extends fine-tuning arguments well beyond their traditional astrophysical home. Cosmologists and particle physicists have argued for decades that the strength of the strong force, the cosmological constant, and the ratio of the electron-to-proton mass appear remarkably tuned to permit galaxies, stars and stable atoms. Trachenko's team is now arguing that an additional, narrower window must be added on top: the constants must allow not only complex chemistry but also the right kind of fluid mechanics for that chemistry to be biologically usable.

The result was reported on ScienceDaily on May 8 and has been highlighted by science writers as a rare example of a fine-tuning claim that draws directly from experimentally measurable quantities. Skeptics of fine-tuning arguments — who note that observers necessarily inhabit universes whose constants permit observers — say the new line of reasoning will need to be sharpened against anthropic counterarguments. But Trachenko's team emphasizes that, unlike many philosophical fine-tuning claims, theirs is mathematically grounded in well-validated equations of statistical physics that link constants to viscosity.

The implications, if the framework holds up, run in two directions. For astrobiology, the argument tightens the screws on which kinds of universes — and which kinds of planetary chemistries — could conceivably support life. For fundamental physics, it adds an additional constraint that any future "theory of everything" attempting to derive constants from first principles must reproduce. Trachenko's group plans to extend the analysis to additional fluid properties, including thermal conductivity and surface tension, in the coming year.