We’re Living in a Giant Mouse’s Brain
Okay, so maybe it isn’t that simple. But a stunning photograph from an international group of scientists has illustrated just how the universe might look according to a computer simulation. While it’s stunning, it’s not really so noteworthy unless you juxtapose it with photographs of a brain cell. The two look exactly the same. So is the universe we know, and everything within it nothing more than a microcosm of something else? We take the journey past the speculation and try to figure out just what that “something” might look like.
When looking at a typical cell it’s difficult to get a firm fix on what the tiny components resting on the electrons of the cell might look like, but if they existed we might find they look fairly similar to planets or something very similar. Likewise, looking at the entire universe it’s difficult to tell what the creature it is part of would look like. But there are a few things we could in theory do to bring us one step closer to that conclusion. The human body is composed of nitrogen, carbon, potassium, and other trace elements found in the universe around us in each cell. By that logic we may be able to surmise that since helium is one of the most common elements in our universe, the being making up this cell could be primarily helium based.
And if it were a brain cell, what could we expect of the way it works? The theory of relativity suggests there could never be a force that moves faster than the speed of light. However, on the quantum level scientists have observed communication of sorts happening actually faster than the speed of light thanks to an effect known as quantum entanglement. Is it possible a similarly alien phenomenon could happen on the macrocosmic level? Perhaps there is a force that moves much faster than the speed of light allowing communication to take place in this massive cell’s perspective far faster than anything we on Earth have ever been able to observe.
Similarly, it lends credence to the idea that on the much smaller level there are in fact microcosms living within each and every one of us. And on the even smaller level, these microcosms could in theory have microcosms living within them as well. And while we may be insignificant in comparison to the vastness of the stars, we could actually have a multitude of universes residing within every cell of our bodies. Just as we are insignificant we are profoundly significant.
But what more could we learn of this cell? It seems fairly young since as the universe expands it could theoretically be growing (assuming cell growth was analogous in the massive scale as it is on Earth). And just as we see mathematical constants such as the Fibanacci sequence elsewhere in nature, similar patterns could appear up to this massive cosmic level.
