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Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

nautil.us

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Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#41

Post by Swizec »

tsunamifury wrote: post #39

It's answer of "No" is predicated on two assumptions: that the lifeform is not colonial in nature and that time is not a localized phenomenon. While on the surface that later assumption might sound absurd, our universe could very well be a Local Bubble of time. Time could even be a biological function of a higher dimensional being that is the size of the universe. There is also no way to disprove that without observi…

> There is also no way to disprove that without observing beyond the universe, which may get a bit dicey.

My high school physics prof had the best answer to "What is beyond the universe?" --> "Surely if we ever find something outside of the universe, we will be smart enough to call that the universe too"

He was referencing the idea that universe contains everything by definition.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#42

Post by benaadams »

banachtarski wrote: post #7
bitL wrote: post #2

We still don't know if the Universe itself isn't a living organism with us playing the role of tiny viruses that require intelligence/consciousness to fulfill certain tasks, like what gut bacteria does for us.

We do. If you bothered to read the article, it makes a point that the communication speed between the components would be slow enough (even at light speed signaling) that the age of the universe would not have permitted sufficient time for such an organism to evolve and do anything.

> Given that our brains are composed of neurons, which are themselves, in essence, specialized cooperative single-cell organisms

Don't humans to a degree fulfill this role; the mass behavior of the species (recently) acting as form of brain with emerging self-awareness of the galaxy/universe; since we study it, and are also part of it?

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#44

Post by jfaucett »

Swizec wrote: post #41
tsunamifury wrote: post #39

It's answer of "No" is predicated on two assumptions: that the lifeform is not colonial in nature and that time is not a localized phenomenon. While on the surface that later assumption might sound absurd, our universe could very well be a Local Bubble of time. Time could even be a biological function of a higher dimensional being that is the size of the universe. There is also no way to disprove that without observi…

> There is also no way to disprove that without observing beyond the universe, which may get a bit dicey. My high school physics prof had the best answer to "What is beyond the universe?" --> "Surely if we ever find something outside of the universe, we will be smart enough to call that the universe too" He was referencing the idea that universe contains everything by definition.

Thats a clever but not very mathematical answer. The general problem here is the conflation of universe i.e. "all of spacetime and everything we will ever discover" with the idea of a universal set, which doesn't have to include all elements and is rather arbitrary/relative.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#45

Post by Taek »

banachtarski wrote: post #35
paradite wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe the age of universe is indeed "too short" for it to do anything useful yet? Your argument seems to be supporting the idea that the universe is like a baby who is still too young to do anything.

I mean, before humans, there were eukaryotes, and prokaryotes before them. My argument is not supporting that the universe is a baby. It is saying that the being does not exist because it could not have evolved on this timescale, in the same way that single celled organisms are not human babies.

If we assume that the big bang was actually the conception event of some other cosmic entity, the universe could very easily be a living organism that's the equivalent of a few microsecond old fertilized zygote.

So yes, a universe sized lifeform could not have evolved randomly since the big bang, but you can only be confident about that if you assume that nothing exists outside the spacetime bubble we call the universe.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#46

Post by olegkikin »

Swizec wrote: post #41
tsunamifury wrote: post #39

It's answer of "No" is predicated on two assumptions: that the lifeform is not colonial in nature and that time is not a localized phenomenon. While on the surface that later assumption might sound absurd, our universe could very well be a Local Bubble of time. Time could even be a biological function of a higher dimensional being that is the size of the universe. There is also no way to disprove that without observi…

> There is also no way to disprove that without observing beyond the universe, which may get a bit dicey. My high school physics prof had the best answer to "What is beyond the universe?" --> "Surely if we ever find something outside of the universe, we will be smart enough to call that the universe too" He was referencing the idea that universe contains everything by definition.

In terms of definitions, generally cosmos contains everything.

Universe is our local observable space-time with the earliest event we can detect being the big bang.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#47

Post by Poc »

It make me think of Von neuman probe. If we can consider that a robot or something with connections similar to our neurons can be a living creature. Then maybe if something like Von Neuman probes existed it could have colonized the whole galaxy (actually it could be done in a few hundred millions years) then those probes, while each one have is own brain, could communicate with the other probes and even if two probes at two opposite sides of the galaxy couldn't communicate, they would still be connected. Then maybe this network could be consider as a living creature.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#48

Post by olegkikin »

banachtarski wrote: post #7
bitL wrote: post #2

We still don't know if the Universe itself isn't a living organism with us playing the role of tiny viruses that require intelligence/consciousness to fulfill certain tasks, like what gut bacteria does for us.

We do. If you bothered to read the article, it makes a point that the communication speed between the components would be slow enough (even at light speed signaling) that the age of the universe would not have permitted sufficient time for such an organism to evolve and do anything.

You're presuming the speed of light is the hard limit. Whereas we know for a fact faster movement is possible - the space-time itself was expanding faster.

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#49

Post by bitL »

trophycase wrote: post #31
bitL wrote: post #2

We still don't know if the Universe itself isn't a living organism with us playing the role of tiny viruses that require intelligence/consciousness to fulfill certain tasks, like what gut bacteria does for us.

This is my belief. I've always wondered how the reproductive mechanism will work. It's a little anthropocentric and pseudoscientific, but I like to imagine it's our destiny as humans to reproduce the universe.

I would rather hack and reprogram it ;-)

Re: Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

#50

Post by eljimmy »

tsunamifury wrote: post #39

It's answer of "No" is predicated on two assumptions: that the lifeform is not colonial in nature and that time is not a localized phenomenon. While on the surface that later assumption might sound absurd, our universe could very well be a Local Bubble of time. Time could even be a biological function of a higher dimensional being that is the size of the universe. There is also no way to disprove that without observi…

Thinking about what exists outside the universe always makes my brain feel weird. It seems impossible for your thoughts to imagine anything because your thoughts themselves are bound by the universe itself.
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