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Kostya Trachenko, Professor of Physics at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL<\/a>), has spent years asking what limits a liquid\u2019s flow. Cells depend on motion at very small scales.<\/p>\n Proteins fold, nutrients diffuse, molecular motors haul cargo, and waste gets pushed out. None of it happens without viscosity behaving the way it does in water.<\/p>\n Change how thick or thin a liquid runs, and cell chemistry can slow, stall, or run out of balance. Trachenko\u2019s question was whether the laws governing that one number reach further than anyone had guessed.<\/p>\n A floor for liquids<\/p>\n His earlier work<\/a> in 2020 found something unexpected. Viscosity in any liquid has a hard floor \u2013 a value it cannot drop below no matter how hot or pressurized it gets.<\/p>\n That floor depends on the deepest constants in physics: the Planck constant, the electron mass, the electron\u2019s charge. <\/p>\n Water, helium, mercury, molten metals \u2013 their viscosity minima all trace back to those same numbers, confirmed across decades of data.<\/p>\n Blood at the boundary<\/p>\n The newer paper carries that floor into biology. Human blood operates within a narrow viscosity range \u2013 push it outside that window in either direction and the cardiovascular system stops working.<\/p>\n Trachenko ran the numbers. A change of only a few percent in the Planck constant or the electron charge would push blood viscosity outside that healthy range.<\/p>\n Water alongside it would run either thick like tar or absurdly thin. Cellular chemistry would collapse, and the kind of life<\/a> we recognize never gets off the ground.<\/p>\n Until this paper, no one had connected the constraints on how fluids must flow inside organisms directly to the constants of fundamental physics. Trachenko did.<\/p>\n A bio-friendly window<\/p>\n Out of that math falls a striking conclusion. The fundamental constants sit inside a very narrow window. Inside it, liquids stay runny enough for life. Outside it, the chemistry of cells stops.<\/p>\n \u201cUnderstanding how water flows in a cup turns out to be closely related to the grand challenge to figure out fundamental constants,\u201d Trachenko said.<\/p>\n The window spans the Planck constant<\/a>, electron charge, proton mass, and electron mass. Each is squeezed from at least one side. Small variations threaten the diffusion rates and flow speeds biology depends on.<\/p>\n Researchers had long suspected the constants were tuned to allow stars and heavy atoms. No one had shown they must also work for liquid-based life to function. Until now.<\/p>\n Beyond stars and atoms<\/p>\n Fine-tuning arguments usually live in cosmology \u2013 focused on star formation, the production of carbon, and the strength of nuclear forces. Stars produce elements, planets host chemistry, life follows. End of story.<\/p>\n Trachenko\u2019s paper opens a door 15 orders of magnitude below a star\u2019s core. Even in a universe that makes carbon and oxygen, no living thing might emerge if those liquids refuse to flow properly.<\/p>\n A separate study<\/a> on liquid behavior at tiny physical scales has since picked up the same thread, confirming that everyday fluid dynamics traces back to the deepest physical laws.<\/p>\n Multiple rounds of tuning<\/p>\n That redundancy bothered Trachenko. A single round of tuning would have produced atoms and stars, but the second layer of bio-friendly flow looks suspiciously convenient.<\/p>\n He proposes the constants were tuned multiple times, separately. Each round producing a new sustainable structure \u2013 atoms first, then stars, then something as subtle as the thickness of a liquid.<\/p>\n Trachenko sees a parallel with biological evolution. Unrelated lineages can independently arrive at similar traits \u2013 eyes developed separately in vertebrates and in octopuses. A more recent paper<\/a> extends the conjecture into molecular machines inside cells.<\/p>\n The paper is a mathematical argument \u2013 no experiment has directly tested what happens to cells when fundamental constants shift. <\/p>\n Nailing down the precise window boundaries will also need biological input, and the multiple-tuning conjecture remains speculative by Trachenko\u2019s own description.<\/p>\n Liquid viscosity and life<\/p>\n Before this paper, fine-tuning arguments about the chemistry required for life stopped at atomic nuclei and the heavy elements stars produce. They now reach all the way down to living cells.<\/p>\n The question of why our Universe permits life now has a calculable requirement: liquid viscosity must fall inside a tight window set by the Planck constant, electron charge, and proton and electron masses.<\/p>\n For physics, that puts a new check on any future theory attempting to explain why the fundamental constants have the values they do.<\/p>\n Biology gets something too \u2013 a way to ask which life processes break first as viscosity climbs, touching pharmacology, blood disorders, and the search for life on worlds where chemistry runs on different liquids.<\/p>\n The deepest laws of physics, it turns out, can be read in how water moves through a glass on a kitchen counter.<\/p>\n The study is published in Science Advances<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When physicists ask why life exists, they start with stars. Nuclear reactions inside them produce the carbon and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[85,46,370,141],"class_list":["post-440135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}