The following ideas are primarily mine alone, the good, the bad and the ugly, albeit based on and influenced by reading multi volumes of tomes in modern cosmology. However, I’m also quite sure that numerous others have quite independently thought somewhat similar, if not exact, thoughts as well. Therefore, I’ll take no credit for being right, if I don’t get blamed for being wrong!
THE DARWINIAN (REPRODUCING) UNIVERSE
It’s been theorized that our Universe could well have created itself; such is the weirdness of quantum physics. Of course if you are your own parent, there’s no requirement for any actual act of reproduction. Now I can hear you muttering now that it’s silly, even downright ridiculous to even contemplate a universe reproducing itself. I mean Johnny Universe doesn’t have a one night stand with Mary Universe and produce nine million years later little Joey Universe! Yet, where did our Universe come from? Perhaps we (our Universe that is) is the cosmic offspring of some other universe. How?
Eternal inflation is one way of producing lots of universes (a Multiverse), but that’s a sort of budding process with no scope for Darwinian evolution. However, there might be two mechanisms by which a universe can in fact reproduce itself, reproduction that will exhibit Darwinian fitness by the creation of other universes that would maximize their reproductive capabilities. The two means are 1) black holes, and 2) E.T.
While the precise physics of the internal doings of black holes aren’t clear, there is reason to theorize/speculate, based on what we suspect that physics might be, to further suspect that black holes give rise to other universes, albeit ones forever beyond our reach. All the stuff, information, etc. which forever goes down the black hole gurgler, while lost to us, has to go somewhere. That somewhere is a new universe, a new universe that owes its existence to a black hole in our universe.
Then what about a highly intelligent and technological extraterrestrial civilization that could be ideally placed to create an entirely new universe if it wanted to? I mean, our Universe started out at a size where quantum affects rule. That is, very tiny. So I don’t mean creating a fully matured universe billions of light years across at one go. Rather, create a tiny quantum universe, akin to what ours was ‘in the beginning’, which would expand and inflate and condense, etc. That might not be beyond the ways and means of a super technological civilization.
So, any universe that has had a natural selection by which its physics are the sort of physics that’s conducive to producing either lots of black holes, and/or advanced technological civilizations, will be the sort of universe that will produce offspring, a universe in turn which might produce even more universes which will produce even more, and so on. Sounds sort of like terrestrial biology to me!
In short, this is a nice variation on the creation of a Multiverse, which would probably contain a lot of you!
Further reading:
Smolin, Lee; The Life of the Cosmos; Oxford University Press, New York; 1997:
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