Universe : The Cosmic Brain
Exploring the Hidden Identity of Our Universe
It happened to me a few months ago when I was pulling an all-nighter to meet assignment deadlines. I had skipped dinner that night. Hungry and needing a break, I grabbed a quick snack from Anna’s shop and started scrolling through social media. While in the process, a random YouTube short popped up which was about to give my understanding of the universe some serious perspective.
Let’s try to picture the colossally massive and infinitely bounded universe. In case you are unable to imagine, steal a glance at the picture below. What do you see? A vast number of bright spots (galaxies) connected to each other via thin wires to form a mesh-like structure. Are you able to relate this picture with something else which is significant ? A small hint. Everyone has it, but not all use it. Voila! Its the human brain! But on a serious note, have you ever thought about this ? Apparently, this isn’t a strange coincidence but rather something which has baffled scientists all around the world for quite a lot of time. At first it didn’t bother me. But later that night, after completing everything and as I was about to sleep, I started getting more curious after I got to know about an interesting incident.
Flashback to 2020, astrophysicist Franco Vazza and neuroscientist Alberto Felletti made a groundbreaking discovery. They were performing some experiments within the different regions of the human brain. There was nothing strange as such until when the magnification was made about 40x, they found that the structures visible in the sample closely resemble the cosmic web of the universe. Their findings gained more traction when the samples were compared with the images of the universe captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, subsequently.
They had analyzed the samples meticulously under higher magnifications. After some months of serious investigation, they came up with another similarity. Some say that there are nearly 100 billion-200 billion galaxies in the observable universe whilst others have kept the threshold up to 2 trillion. And, do you know how many neurons are there in a human brain? Nearly 86 billion. Seems like a large gap ? Interestingly, the proportion of neurons in the brain is strikingly similar to the proportion of galaxies in the universe. Besides that, there is one more striking similarity between the brain and universe. The remaining non-neuronal portion of the brain does not interact much with each other. Similarly, the universe is also mostly made up of dark matter, which doesn’t interact with normal matter. Phenomenal! Isn’t it?
There is also a branch of philosophy dedicated to this hypothesis known as panpsychism which says that everything in the universe has a mind or a mind-like quality and so does the universe itself.
The major role we can associate with the brain is to think, reason, control and remember. But, do you know how we give birth to random thoughts? You can understand it like this-at the microscopic level, whenever there is a sudden disturbance in the brain, the neurons get excited and tend to influence the adjacent neurons which in turn generates an electrical impulse to carry information from one part of the brain to the desired location, triggering the necessary action. Similarly, whenever one celestial entity collides with another, either due to their gravitational attraction or some other astronomical phenomena, they tend to influence entities around them. And this is how cosmic events are born.
Don’t you feel that such ideas are wildly crazy? But do you know the real reason behind all the hype about this in the scientific community? Scientists have long been searching for something called as the “theory of everything” — a unifying theory providing a so-called “god equation” which can perhaps explain the universe in its entirety ranging from subatomic particles to colossal black holes. Broadly speaking, an equation capable of reconciling both the classical and quantum theories, which presently are poles apart and hence incompatible outside their domains.
But, in future, if someone were able to find this missing piece and establish a connection between them, then it would be a monumental breakthrough in the history of humankind, perhaps the biggest, in my opinion. Not only would it earn them a Nobel Prize, but more importantly, it would also revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
As we know, every coin has two sides. Naturally, there are a plenty of folks at the table who aren’t convinced yet, and why should they be? After all, isn’t science all about poking and prodding, asking questions, trying to disprove each others theories and demanding solid proof before we buy into any such wild ideas? It’s like that friend who always needs to see the receipts before paying up the bill — and hey, that skepticism keeps us honest and on our toes!
Some scientists argue that this is clearly a case of confirmation bias. To give an essence, this idea says that we see things the way we want to see them, even if it is not true. In other words, we interpret the world around us and tend to recall information aligning with our pre-existing beliefs. To illustrate, consider the viral example from a few years ago when news circulated about a crater on the moon resembling a human face. Despite scientific explanations indicating the crater’s formation as a natural phenomena, individuals with preconceived notions started speculating about extraterrestrial life. However, upon viewing from a different angle, the crater no longer resembled a face.
For those who are convinced that the universe is much similar to the brain, there exists a major loophole that casts doubt upon this belief. Our brain, with a size of just a few centimeters, processes information at a speed of about 100 meters per second, constrained by its physical dimensions. In contrast, the observable universe spans billions of light-years, and everything within it travels at or near the speed of light. This would mean that for information to traverse such distances in the universe, it would require hundreds of billions of years to just merely come into existence which clearly exceeds the current estimated age of the universe (approximately 13.8 billion years).
As such, what can we ultimately conclude? Are we living inside the mind of someone, or is the universe itself a self-aware entity? Perhaps, this question remains unanswerable with today’s level of scientific understanding. However, one thing is clear that our understanding of the universe and our place within it still has a long way to go. The research carried out by Dr. Vazza and Dr. Felletti has indeed sparked curiosity and debate within the scientific community, pushing the boundaries of our current knowledge and encouraging us to contemplate the possibilities that lie ahead.
Let’s keep our imaginations vivid and our curiosity ablaze as we journey through the wonders of the cosmos. Until next time, remember to stay curious and keep the spirit of exploration alive!
