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The Star Larvae Hypothesis
Nature's Plan for Humankind
Part 2. Star Larvae

Cosmological Natural Selection

The physical constants of nature appear to be tuned to ensure that black holes (the universe's reproductive organs) arise and proliferate. The values of the constants suggest that a planless Darwinian process operates across an ensemble of universes.

A Darwinian explanation already has been proposed to account for the anthropic coincidences, one that goes beyond merely asserting that biological life wouldn't exist if the constants were other than what they are. The Darwinian explanation accounts for the unlikely coincidence of the constants by invoking the logic of natural selection. It does not propose that carbon atoms, as in the earlier example, evolved during the lifetime of our universe to have their particular properties. But it does propose that they nonetheless possess their properties because of a Darwinian process. According to this explanation of the anthropic coincidences, the fundamental physical constants evolved to become what they are and hence give carbon and all other atoms their particular properties, but this evolutionary process did not occur in our universe.

Spearheaded by physicist Lee Smolin, who lays out the idea in his book, "The Life of the Cosmos", this Darwinian cosmogony assigns to universes a capacity to reproduce. It proposes a multigenerational ensemble of universes. In the Darwinian analogy that Smolin draws between universes and organisms, a universe’s black holes are its reproductive organs, and its fundamental physical constants are its genes. According to Smolin’s model, the black holes in this universe possess hidden dimensions that reside in other universes or, more precisely, that are other universes.

What looks from within this universe to be a giant implosion—a black hole that sucks in matter and energy—is in some other dimension a great explosion—a big bang that pushes out matter and energy into a new universe. Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose laid the foundation for this cosmological symmetry when they demonstrated that big bangs and black holes mirror each other mathematically, that the same equations describe both processes, one when the equations are read forwards and the other when they are read backwards.

Smolin’s theory proposes that the big bang that created this universe was the result of a black hole in this universe’s parent universe and, similarly, that black holes in this universe spawn new universes outside of this universe, and that those baby universes develop according to their own physical laws. In this model, black holes and big bangs are complementary aspects of a single cosmogonic process.

This is the major premise of the theory of cosmological natural selection put forth by Smolin and popularized with the help of science writer John Gribbin. However, the theory goes further than just proposing a reciprocal relationship between black holes and big bangs, and a resulting multi-generational ensemble of universes. The theory gives the process a Darwinian spin.

When a fresh universe explodes into being from a black hole that resides in a pre-existing universe, the values of the baby universe's fundamental constants are influenced—but not completely determined—by those of the parent, according to the theory of cosmological natural selection. The indeterminacy of quantum physics allows some play in the system of inheritance. When a black hole forms from the collapse of a large star, information is not perfectly conserved, according to the quantum theory of black holes. As a result, the values of the physical constants are likely to differ from parent universe to offspring and among the offspring. Once such variation is introduced into an ensemble of successive generations, the succession proceeds according to the Darwinian model. If its capacity to make black holes determines the reproductive fitness of a universe, then Darwinian selection theory predicts that those universes most predisposed to make black holes will be most successful at passing their values of the constants forward into future generations. In other words, the evolution of universes selects for reproductive fitness, and this selection pressure drives the evolution of universes in the direction of increasing fertility, which means in the direction of making more black holes.

So, in the theory of cosmological natural selection, the Anthropic Principle becomes the Black Hole Principle. In this model, the values of the fundamental constants of a universe are tuned to maximize black hole production specifically, and everything else is just along for the ride. This means that the Anthropic Principle, or Black Hole Principle, is more specifically the Stellar Principle, because black holes originate from stars.

Moreover, the constants of our universe predispose nature toward the production not only of black holes, but also of biological life. According to Smolin and Gribbin this side effect is merely coincidental and has no particular bearing on the theory of cosmological natural selection. They are adamant on this point. In "In the Beginning: The Birth of the Living Universe", (Little, Brown & Company, 1993) Gribbin writes that, "It is natural for human beings like us to see the coincidences of cosmology as indicating that the Universe has been set up (either by a designer or by evolution) for our benefit" but that this anthropocentric view may be "very wide of the mark." In these remarks he is suggesting that biological life may be a byproduct of the real mechanics of nature, similar to the way in which science traditionally has viewed consciousness, which it has seen as a byproduct of neurological metabolism, a kind of waste heat radiated by the mechanical operations of the brain, but inessential for neurological operations to proceed.

Gribbin states the point again:

"That reason [that certain physical properties of the universe are what they are] may have nothing to do with the presence of people in the Universe today; it may indeed be a lucky accident that we are here, because the conditions that have naturally evolved in the Universe for other reasons just happen to favor us. Nevertheless, the extent to which those coincidences of cosmology do favor us is truly astonishing."(Italic in original.)

And later in the same book:

"[T]he fact that our Universe is 'just right' for organic life-forms like ourselves turns out to be no more than a side-effect of the fact that it is 'just right' for the production of black holes and baby universes. [. . . .] Although it is now clear that the Universe has not been set up for our benefit, and that the existence of organic life-forms on Earth is simply a minor side-effect of an evolutionary process involving universes, galaxies and stars which actually favors the production of black holes, nevertheless it is clear that the existence of life-forms like ourselves is an inevitable side effect of those greater evolutionary processes."

Smolin concurs with this dysanthropic interpretation:

"It seems that at least one way for a universe to make a lot of black holes requires that there be carbon and other organic elements, as well as stars that produce these elements in large quantities. The theory then predicts that our universe has these ingredients for life, not because life is special, but because they are typical of universes found in the collection. [. . . .] A universe in which the conditions and the parameters have been tuned so that it is full of stars is a universe in which many of the conditions required for life to exist are satisfied."

If the theory of cosmological natural selection is right, Smolin continues, then the universe is hospitable to organisms such as human beings, "not because we, in particular, are somehow necessary or important for the universe—but only because living systems exist as a byproduct of a much larger pattern of self-organization and self-structuring . . . ."

The development in this universe of minds capable of engineering canoes, castles, and credit card economies is just a happy happenstance. Humankind's initiation rites, sonnets, and soccer championships are just so much noise. The fullness of human life and the intricacies of Earth’s biosphere are serendipitous byproducts of an evolutionary momentum that has to do with the making of black holes and nothing else. This is the implication of the theory of cosmological natural selection.

On this point the star larvae hypothesis takes direct issue with the theory of cosmological natural selection, as put forth by Smolin and Gribbin. The star larvae hypothesis argues that biology is an essential player in the ontogeny of the universe, and hence in its reproductive fitness, and that the "coincidence" of black holes and biological organisms needing the same values of the fundamental constants is no coincidence at all. It is as meaningful a scientific discovery as any of Galileo or Darwin, even if the scientific community reflexively dismisses the significance of the discovery, for the time being, out of theophobia.

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