Daily Telegraph

By Adrian Berry Science Correspondent

Our universe may have been created by intelligent beings in another universe, accordinging to a paper that will appear in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Its conditions were precisely suited to the development of life, suggesting that it might be an artificial creation, said its author, Prof Edward Harrison, a cosmologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

"We do not know why such natural quantities as the universal strength of gravity, the speed of light, and the binding force within atoms have the exact values they have.

"But if any of them were any different, the universe would be barren without stars or life.

"For example, if gravity was slightly weaker than it is, then stars would never shine. But if it were stronger, stars would burn out too quickly, giving life no chance to evolve."