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    Why the Laws of Physics Are Inevitable

    by Natalie Wolchover Dec 09, 2019 5 minutes

    Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.

    These three objects illustrate the principles behind “spin,” a property of fundamental particles. A domino needs a full turn to get back to the same place. A two of clubs needs only a half turn. And the hour hand on a clock must spin around twice before it tells the same time again.Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine

    Compared to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, far less gets said about one of the most profound facts to have crystallized in physics over the past half-century: To an astonishing degree, nature is the way it is because it couldn’t be any different. “There’s just no freedom in the laws of physics that we have,” said Daniel Baumann, a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam.

    Since the 1960s, and increasingly in the past decade, physicists

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