Year 2014 :: Life of our Universe

Modern science has made a lot of discoveries in terms of understanding our universe. Still, we probably do not know 99% of it. It is not only the universe that keeps puzzling us, but we actually want to know this "whole thing" - not just the universe, but also the "outer world" within which our universe resides. And also the outer of that outer world. We do not even know where is the end of this outer and outer and outer... what is ultimately the purpose & nature of this "whole thing" ?

Well, science will definitely make progress in discovering the universe. But I am right now thinking about a different angle to it. Since science has a logical way of thinking, so far whatever science has done, is purely observation & analysis oriented, materialistic, and event driven. I have nothing against this approach, but right now I am thinking of something extra-ordinary that may be missing in this whole approach. We know that Universe is not a simple thing... so we cannot think in a simple way to solve it. What I am going to say next, may not make any sense to the readers. And I am also not saying that it makes much sense to me either. But it is just another dimension I am thinking and it may just be a possibility.

Life of our Universe

Without wasting more time, let me present the concept of Life of our Universe. Please remember, that I am talking about life "of" our universe and not the life in our universe. We know that life exists in this universe in the form of plants and animals as we see on the Earth. There may be some other form of life in some other planet too. But I am not talking about that life. I am saying, what if this Universe itself has a mind, what if it is not just a material structure... or may be each Galaxy is a "living being" - a gigantic "animal" running within the universe which may be another "living being"... a much much bigger size "animal". We never know :)

Source

I know this looks absurd. But there is a reason to think in this line. If we look around within our world, we see that the world is made of matter and life. If we remove life from the world, it really becomes meaningless. Or probably more accurately, only if we add "life" into this world, it gets a lot of meaning. It can certainly exist without life, but it makes not much sense in that case. We are missing this "life" part in our analysis of the universe. Somehow I feel, that the universe itself has a relation to life. This life may not be similar to what we call as life. But it may be also not just a collection of matters.

I want to confess here, that I am myself not very much convinced with this idea because I am born and brought up in the traditional science and hence I cannot accept anything without proof. This is just an idea. It may be right or wrong. I don't know.

Objections and two possible answers

I know that you will have an immediate question before you can accept this idea and I have the answers.

Question is: If this universe had a life, we should have observed the presence of life in the objects around us. But the matters with which this universe is built - like the stones, the water, the sand, the gases etc. - we do not see any presence of "life" in them. So how can we say that universe has a life ?

I will answer it in 2 different ways:

First, let us not assume that we know all different types of "life". We know that life can exist in 2 forms - Animal and Plant. But until very recent times in the history of mankind, we did not know that even plants have a life. We knew only about animals. We discovered a new form of life called plants. Similarly, animals and plants may not be the end of life - there may be N number of other types of life that we are yet to discover. I am not necessarily saying here, that sand or stone or water has a life. What I am saying is, the universe - made of these elements - may have a life and a mind of its own.

Secondly, and more importantly, I believe that today we may not be in a position to sense or measure the life of universe - even if it has one. To explain this point, let us take the example of a bacteria. A bacteria resides within our body, it interacts with human cells, but can it really sense that the gigantic human body - which may be thousands of thousand times bigger in comparison to its own size - has a life and a mind ? Let us go even deeper. Our body is ultimately made of millions of millions of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and other molecules. Any sub-atomic element interacting with the carbon or hydrogen molecules present in our body cannot "sense" that the carbon or hydrogen molecule is actually part of a "human being". In fact, the carbon or hydrogen molecules may not even have a life. But when we look at the whole body as a collection of such individual molecules - we see life.

This gives rise to an interesting question. We know that our body has a life. If we take just one organ - yes, it also has a life. If we just take one cell, yes - it also has a life. A cell takes birth and it dies as well. But if we divide a cell into many parts, will each part also have a life ? Where does this existence of life vanish if we keep dividing it ? We probably do not know the answer. But certainly we cannot sense any existence of life at the molecular level. So we conclude that the molecules do not have a life. If we think very deep, it comes out to be just an assumption - or a limitation of our sense organ - or a limitation of our definition of life.

Going back to our original answer, our universe is such a big big thing that we are unable to sense if it has a life or not. Much in the same fashion as we do not see any "life" in individual molecules of our body, we do not see any "life" in the matters present in the universe. It does not mean that our whole body cannot have a life. And it does not mean that the universe as a whole cannot have a life.

This is just the beginning and we need to think a lot before we can conclude anything on this.