In a 2007 report for “Scientific American,” theoretical physicist Paul Davies reflected on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He cited a conference in 1995 when renowned Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve called life a cosmic rule and declared it almost definite to be found on any Earth-like planets. De Duve’s announcement underpinned the conviction of many scientists that the universe is teeming with life. Dubbed “biological determinism” by Robert Shapiro of New York University, this theory is sometimes put across as: “Life is written into the laws of nature.” The panspermia theory is also mapped out as “Cosmic Ancestry,” a development of Fred Hoyle’s original concept by Brig Klyce and James Lovelock. Supporters of Cosmic Ancestry maintain that –– like mass and energy –– life has no primary origin. It is written so profoundly into the laws of nature that the blueprint for life in the universe cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be altered from one form to another.
The cosmic storage of life’s genetic material is analogous to a self-repairing heat and mass transfer assembly. The large-scale motion of microscopic ice grains in deep space and their irradiation by ultraviolet light energetically recycles life’s synthesis by way of numerous microbial “splash-back” transmigration routes plotted by the shock waves of comet-type collisions.
Cosmic Ancestry indicates that together with the “conservation of mass and energy,” studies should also consider the “conservation of synthesis.” It’s a simple transfer rule that merely says: As the mass of a relativistic system decreases, its energy will increase, and vice versa. Its value must always be greater than zero, for without at least some conservation of synthesis, an interchange of mass and energy would not be possible.
An ideal state for the conservation of synthesis can be pictured as an equal mixture of mass and energy intertwined like an oscillating filament in a vacuum, which is a rather handy description of the quantum world. The most efficient synthesis found in nature is of course “biosynthesis,” or the metabolism of life. If a superior intelligence or God is indeed behind the laws of physics, perhaps the trinity of “Mass, Energy, and Life” are three aspects of only one thing –– the fluctuation of a void:
Father - Singularity of Infinite Mass
Holy Spirit - Quantum of Absolute Energy
Son - Synthesis of Intelligent Life
According to the former head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, perhaps at times God does intervene in quantum mechanical uncertainty to nudge nature’s designs, because the chaotic unpredictability of complex systems impacts our future. “It is thus perfectly possible that God might influence the creation in subtle ways that are unrecognizable to scientific observation. In this way, modern science opens the door to divine action without the need for law-breaking miracles,” Collins recently said.
But if the mind of God or some type of higher consciousness is hardwired into the stuff of space-time, how did it get there? Is there a commonsense reason why the initial conditions of the big bang were fine-tuned, spot on, for a life-sustaining cosmos –– or is consciousness just a weird and spectacular accident? What caused the big bang in the first place, and where did the matter that became the universe come from?
If the universe started from the singularity of a big bang and subsequently expanded, it seems likewise possible that it might also do the opposite and contract to a big crunch. There is a logical symmetry to such an effect. If the universe were fated for a big crunch, it would either contract to a singularity (a point of infinite density and zero volume) and everything would cease to exist; or otherwise, it might bounce back with a great outburst. This “big bounce” would be very similar to or perhaps exactly the same as the big bang before it. The theoretical multiverse is said to be the collection of multiple possible universes that together consist of all of reality. As luck would have it, William James first coined the particular term “multiverse” in 1895. The various universes within the multiverse are usually called parallel universes.
Today, a mixed bag of multiverse theories is taken into account. Astrophysicist Thomas Gold once proposed the reality of “other universes nesting within our observable space.” For physicist Michio Kaku, loop quantum gravity of the multiverse may be linked to the upcoming science of teleportation. The ekpyrotic model by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok is a forerunner of the widely held cyclic models in which the universe goes through infinite, self-sustaining big bounce cycles, with an eternity of alternating big bang and big crunch mirror-image phases repeating forever.
Theorist Peter Lynds recently proposed a model (“On a Finite Universe with no Beginning or End”) in which time is cyclic, and the universe repeats an infinite number of times. However, because it is exactly the same cycle that repeats, it can also be interpreted as taking place just once. The result is a two-phase multiverse loop that has no beginning and no end, but is finite and circumvents singularities. Problems such as monopoles, matter–antimatter imbalances, and why initial conditions at the big bang appear to be so specific require no additional solutions.
A key feature of Lynds' model is his reasoning of thermodynamic time reversal. Rather than the second law of thermodynamics being violated and entropy decreasing, the order of events suddenly turns around in Lynds’ cyclic universe so the singularity is avoided and entropy can continue to increase.
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