NORTHERN PLANNER

While were on the subject of evolution, here’s some stuff on a galactic level that will really bake your noodle. Just look at this picture first. At first glance it’s stars, but it ISN’T. Those smears of light are galaxies, so far away we’re seeing them as they were billions of years ago. The distance between them is unimaginable. Makes you feel small no?

We’re very lucky to be here. If the universe was only slightly different, not only would life be impossible, so would be a stable universe for us to live in. There are only four forces in the universe that matter; gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. If they were slightly stronger or weaker, the universe would be a big mess. Like if gravity was a weaker, suns would die out too quickly to sustain planets……or even create the dense matter we’re all made of.

Sounds like someone designed it that way doesn’t it? The instant the universe came into being these four laws came into play. But they didn’t have to, they could have been different. The odds on it being like it is are too big to take in. So the survey suggests we got a helping hand?

Maybe not. We wouldn’t be here is the universe was different, we wouldn’t be around to marvel at how unlucky we were! Since we here, it’s easy to marvel at what looks like divine interventio… but it seems that universes are created all the time. We just happen to be in one like this!  We’re just one of them.… If you could see all the universes out there, it may change your view.

Maybe it’s a bit like believing the love of your life is perfectly designed for you, some mystical soulmate, the ONLY person out there because you’ve met them, and not the other potential loves of your life.

So what has this got to do with evolution? Well, the universe came from a pinprick of infinitely condensed matter, and rapidly expanded in the Big Bang. But these pinpricks are not that uncommon, they’re called Black Holes……what’s left when massive stars die and implode on themselves. The unimanigable gravity crushed eveything together into that pinprick, something with gravity so strong that light cannot escape and the very fabric of existence is ripped apart.

Lots of theories point to these Black Holes existing in more than one dimension at a time, that they form ‘white holes’ elsewhere that spew out matter, instead of pulling it in. More Big Bangs in other words, other universes, all the time.

So maybe our entire universe got here by some sort of ‘physics Darwinism’. Our universe is very good at prodicing black holes, ergo, making universes. It just so happens that it’s good for life too.

Put another way, a universe good for life is good at making universes. The more universes created, the more likely there will be some that then make their own Black Holes and other universes.

So maybe being here is neither lucky, nor designed. It’s just that our type of universe will always dominate since it’s more likely to reproduce even more.

Isn’t that just beatiful? The thought that we could be the result of suns and cosmic dusts and God knows what else crushed together a billion, billion universes ago? And that we’ll probably end up somewhere a billion, billion universes later? The grandeur of it takes my breath away. In a sense, we really will live forever.

If this is remotely interesting, Atom is well worth a read. If it’s not, there’s more recipes coming.