An alternative approach to explaining the hierarchy problem is to invoke the anthropic principle : One assumes that there are many other patches of the universe (or multiverse) in which physics is very different. In particular one can assume that the “ landscape ” of possible universes contains ones where the weak force has a different strength compared to our own. In such a scenario observers would presumably evolve wherever they can. If the observed strength of the weak force is then vital for the emergence of observers, this would explain why the weak force is indeed observed with this strength. Barr and others argued that if one only allows the electroweak symmetry breaking scale to vary between universes, keeping all other parameters fixed, atomic physics would change in ways that would not allow life as we know it.