Question: Why is the universe so exquisitely balanced such that life can exist?

Alex Seeney answered on 11 Jun 2018:

What a great question! This one is tricky to answer in a short amount of time I think. Our planet supports life because it offers a great number of different habitats and conditions for life to exist. Earth supports a huge number of different types of organisms, all of which help to keep the environment in balance. Changing this (for example, by cutting down lots of trees) can cause imbalance, which is what we see when we have extreme weather events like flooding. However, we also see some organisms that adapt to extreme conditions (so for example, there are organisms that can live without oxygen, or that can tolerate extreme cold). All of these different organisms doing different things help to keep life and the environment as we know it in balance.