WHERE ARE THEY?:

New Theory: Universe Created by Intelligent Being (John Roach, March 11, 2004, National Geographic News)

On any given starry night thousands, perhaps millions, of people crane their necks skyward and allow their minds to swirl around two fundamental questions: Are we alone, and why are we here?

According to a lawyer and science enthusiast in Portland, Oregon, not only is the universe full of life, but some of it may be intelligent beyond our wildest imagination. He also says that collectively as intelligent beings we are entwined in our ultimate destiny: to give birth to another universe.

"Intelligent life is, in essence, the reproductive organ of the cosmos," said James Gardner, the lawyer who moonlights as a scientist. He has pulled together his theory—called the selfish biocosm—from the disparate fields of physics, biology, biochemistry, astronomy, and cosmology.

Gardner has published pieces of his theory in several peer-reviewed scientific journals and wraps it together in his recently published book, Biocosm: The New Scientific Theory of Evolution: Intelligent Life Is the Architect of the Universe.

Though Gardner admits the theory is speculative and out-there in the literal and figurative senses, it is grounded enough in serious research to at least tickle the fancy of some of the world's most respected scientists.

Seth Shostak is a senior scientist with the Mountain View, California-based SETI Institute, which is the unofficial hub for researchers on the lookout for extraterrestrial intelligence. He agrees with Gardner's belief that intelligent life is out there.

"It doesn't mean I automatically buy into the entire scenario Gardner is buying into, but I think he is right in suggesting intelligence is not extremely rare," Shostak said. "Of course, I'm in the SETI business, so it's probably not surprising that I believe that."

The selfish biocosm theory begins with the premise that the universe is life friendly. It is not a hostile place full of black holes, uninhabitable planets, and the emptiness that somehow, randomly, allowed intelligent life to evolve on Earth, Gardner says.

It always helps to start a new theory from an obvious falsehood.

MORE:
The Big Lab Experiment: Was our universe created by design? (Jim Holt, May 19, 2004, Slate)

Was our universe created? That is, was it brought into being by an entity with a mind? This is a question I began pondering after my recent inquiry into the end of the universe. (For some reason, cosmic mysteries are best contemplated in pairs.) It is the fundamental issue that separates religious believers, ranging from Deists to Gnostics to Southern Baptists, from nonbelievers. To many atheists, the very idea that our world could have been created by a conscious being seems downright nutty. How could anyone, even a god, "make" a universe?

To get a better understanding of this matter, I thought it might be wise to consult the man who has done more than anyone else to explain how our universe got going. His name is Andrei Linde, and he is a physicist at Stanford University. (He's also an artist and an acrobat, but never mind.) In the early 1980s, the then-thirtysomething Linde came up with a novel theory of the Big Bang that answered three vexing questions: What banged? Why did it bang? And what was going on before it banged? Linde's theory, called "chaotic inflation," explained the shape of space and how galaxies were formed. It also predicted the exact pattern of background radiation from the Big Bang that was observed by the COBE satellite in the 1990s. Linde has been amply honored for his achievement, most recently by being awarded the 2004 Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation (along with Alan Guth, another pioneer of the theory of cosmic inflation).

Among the many curious implications of Linde's theory, one stands out for our present purposes: It doesn't take all that much to create a universe. Resources on a cosmic scale are not required. It might even be possible for someone in a not terribly advanced civilization to cook up a new universe in a laboratory. Which leads to an arresting thought: Could that be how our universe came into being?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 24, 2004 8:50 AM