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Is Our Universe Ours?

Does it even matter?

By Simon McbridePublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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Once we were certain that we were the centre of the universe and oddly it tuned out to be true, relatively.

Almost everything we have ever discovered has turned out to be not the only example. Be it dinosaurs or suns we have found multiple examples of it. There was a time, however, where the Sun was not only considered to be the centre of things (quite the advancement of previous beliefs) but the only example of such a thing; just like Earth was considered to be the only world. Later we knew stars were other suns and some of the obvious moving bodies in the solar system were other worlds. Now we know that other suns have worlds of their own. Some may very well be like ours; in fact, given the astronomical numbers involved this is a given.

There will be and, in fact, we have found many Jupiter-like worlds out there and Giants with Saturn-like rings. Beautiful constructs as they are, they are far from unique. In fact, they are quite mundane. The title of the Lord of the Rings goes to J1407b — a Super Saturn at least 20 times more massive than Saturn itself, or so we have found so far.

Plenty of Super Jupiters have been found out there so far, but this is because they are easy to detect compared to a would like ours or that of a world like Mars. Having said that, plenty of worlds on that sort of scale have been found. The closest being 4.2 light-years from our own solar system. What's even more exciting, study team members said, is that the planet, known as Proxima b, circles in the star's "habitable zone" — the range of distances at which liquid water could be stable on a world's surface. If this is true, our system combined with this one indicates that not only is a world like Earth not uncommon in the galaxy, but the universe may be teaming with them.

That is, however, not what I want to discuss here. As said before, while we once thought that we had examples of one, we have almost always been disproven of that notion, and I suspect the examples we still have are not far behind being disproven.

From the top of my head, the examples we still have that are an example of one are thus: life, civilisation, and the universe. It's not hard to imagine life springing up more than once, in fact, I think it is quite egotistical to think our world is the only place to have done that in a universe so big no one can truly imagine its size.

Life, however, can be tricky to clarify. Normally it gives a description of something that moves, reproduces, expels waste and consumes energy. By that definition fire is life, it most certainly moves, it reproduces itself when it spreads to a new resource, it expels carbon dioxide and consumes oxygen, but we do not tend to assume it is alive.

Life may also exist in ways we have not yet conceived of and may never. We may not even recognise it if we fall upon it. One thing is clear, however, humans are not the only example of life; we are probably not the only example of intelligent life on our own world. Dolphins and primates are clearly smarter than hamsters and given enough time... who knows? (Though as smart as dolphins are while they are in water, they cannot make fire, likely a huge drawback on intelligence, development or at least technology)

Worlds themselves are something we now know for fact are not unique to our own or our solar system. Before Edwin Hubble, our own galaxy was considered to be a unique thing, but today we know that there are hundreds of millions of them, each with billions of stars and untold planets, so let us take this a step further, what about universes?

If the trend holds, the universe itself will not be unique, but one of many and we have no real reason to think otherwise.

What will this mean?

Are there two of you, an infinite number of you? A universe that the Nazi's won? A universe where Carthage beat Rome? A Universe where none of that happened, because Earth never formed? Maybe, but what is the evidence?

Well, the evidence would, itself, be hard to gather as we would need to get it from an altogether different universe, or at least to be certain. It could also be a massive simulation in a computer, a big game of civilisation. Whatever the answer is, it would perhaps have a profound impact on our way of life, but I would argue that it doesn't matter. If we are one of the countless universes or simply a simulation, it would lead to the same conclusion. We are in the only universe that matters, or at least to us, ours.

Don't wast this time, act upon it and make the future better for the next generation. Maybe this is all a dream, maybe nothing you ever do matters, but maybe, just maybe, what you do in your life is the most important thing that will ever happen to anybody and I think it best if you act in that way, no matter the truth of the universe or universes.

fact or fiction
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About the Creator

Simon Mcbride

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Simon is from the UK and writes for a number of publications mostly themed on Sci-Fi and Futurism. Simon has an award for his work on a SciFi postapocalyptic game and nominated for three others.

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