The universe may be learning

Analogies between the universe and biological life have a certain mysticism to them that can make the more rational types of us balk. Simply because a certain structure, such as the neuronal and dendritic pathways of the brain, resembles the complex structures of the universe at the scale of billions of lightyears, does not mean it is alive, conscious, or thinking.

Images credit: Mark Miller, Brandeis University, of a neuron and connections in the brain (L); Virgo Consortium for Cosmological Supercomputer Simulations, of the large-scale structure of the Universe (R), via visualcomplexity.com and the New York Times.

There may be forces that do try to enforce a certain resemblance between these structures, but this is only a surface pattern.

That has not stopped scientists, philosophers, and computer scientists from imagining, however, that the universe may be only one instance of a long line, perhaps an eternal line, of evolving universes.

Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada has been one of the most vocal proponents of an evolving universe. In this theory, the Big Bang was simply the emergence of the present universe from the womb of its “mother” universe. The womb in the mother universe would likely be a massive blackhole, swallowing all the matter needed to fill the present universe from the mother, much in the same way that a baby receives its nutrients from its mother through the umbilical cord. Thus, the event horizon of that black hole would be like an egg shell forming and capturing matter, only for this universe to burst out in a inflation of spacetime.