...Historically, scientists have viewed the cosmos as akin to a rock—complex, perhaps even beautiful, but formed through arbitrary events. Evolutionary cosmologists instead argue that universes, like living organisms, grow and reproduce, spinning off new universes with small variations from their progenitors. In doing so, these cosmic offspring are refined across generations into forms that maximize the number of universes yet to be born. Since the Big Bang, our universe, like any developing child, has been unfurling into an optimal shape.
Under this view, the universe is not a rock. It is an egg...
Smolin’s work was, in turn, inspired by physicists Bryce DeWitt and John Wheeler, who proposed that singularities inside black holes, the places where matter is crushed into a point of infinite density, might expand to produce new universes that follow different physics from the universes that produced them. Every universe—including our own—would, under this logic, have emerged from a Big Bang within a black hole.
Smolin realized that this hypothetical process would allow universes to reproduce, in a way, by making more black holes. And if those new universes could inherit the physics of their parents with small differences—just as new organisms inherit the genes of their parents with small differences—then universes could also evolve with each generation. Specifically, a form of cosmic natural selection would favor universes that make as many black holes as possible. Less fertile universes could persist, but they would produce far fewer offspring. So over time, an increasingly high proportion of universes would be optimized for black hole production—which would imply that our universe, given the odds, is one of those...
If I were to write this as hard science fiction, I would say that the countless possible multidimensional foldings of string theory could fill the role of genetic code. The black hole/big bang bottleneck (no longer a proper singularity) then creates a brief window in which energies are raised high enough that the folding specification can mutate, but the window is so brief that only a tiny fraction of folding possibilities are affected each time. Thus a child universe inherits the folding specification of a parent universe with slight mutations. Because this bottleneck has such incredibly high energy the vacuum energy of the mutations doesn't matter in the moment of mutation, allowing the mutations to be random.
Now, after this new universe has expanded (assuming it is viable with its mutations), the vacuum energy settles on some metastable point. In this metastable point, the vast majority of the folding specification doesn't really matter. Supersymmetry, if true, would be an example of such a latent part of the folding specification in our universe. Perhaps in our universe there is a fourth generation of particles that weighs as much as a small planet, we simply don't know, and so this fourth generation is free to mutate across our line of universes without affecting universe reproductive rate.
What this means is that the folding specification has "junk DNA" to work with. Universes aren't just doing some sort of gradient descent, sometimes a mutation will drop a previously latent structure down into the range where it actually affects how the universe functions.
Like suppose this fourth generation with particles the mass of planets had leptons that weighed as much as quarks. It wouldn't matter to us, but if a child universe happens to reduce the mass of fourth generation particles to be less than an up quark, suddenly out of nowhere you have fourth-generation protons that are lighter than first-generation ones but which need to interact with fouth-generation leptons that are much heavier than electrons for purposes of the weak nuclear force. This would usually have a negative effect on universe reproductive capability, but sometimes a positive one.
If I were to write this as hard science fiction
Then you would present it as such, and not as a "theory" having anything to do with reality.
How do you think I got my MSc? By admitting that the experiment I had spent over a year working on was kind of bad and fidgety and that the vague pattern we found in the data might as well be a measurement artifact or random chance when my professor said it was publishable quality?
Academia is fucked up. Incentives to embellish and gloss away are massive. $30k and the social capital of a MSc for me. Who knows what it is for them.
Though to be fair, I did walk away in disgust and they clearly aren't.
By admitting that the experiment I had spent over a year working on was kind of bad and fidgety and that the vague pattern we found in the data might as well be a measurement artifact or random chance when my professor said it was publishable quality?
Yes, that's exactly what you should have done. You should have recorded your failure and reframed the entire thing as a report on said failure instead of committing academic fraud. Like, no shit that's what you should have done. What the fuck.
If you don't want people to commit fraud then make sure they can live comfortably without committing fraud. Ethics is for the hypocritical and the soon-to-be-poor.
The reason why you can't live comfortably is because of the tremendous number of people who already committed fraud and/or are committing it right now. Don't blame the way the world is for your choice to perpetuate its failings. Ethics is for the brave. Don't be a coward, and certainly don't do it under the flag of science.
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@mander.xyz
A community to discuss space & astronomy through a STEM lens
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive. This means no harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions by discussing in good faith.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
Also keep in mind, mander.xyz's rules on politics
Please keep politics to a minimum. When science is the focus, intersection with politics may be tolerated as long as the discussion is constructive and science remains the focus. As a general rule, political content posted directly to the instance’s local communities is discouraged and may be removed. You can of course engage in political discussions in non-local communities.
Related Communities
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This assumes that the laws of physics differ between the inside and outside of a black hole in a way similar to genetic mutation, and there's no evidence that's even possible, let alone a likely scenario.
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