Physicists Find Evidence That The Universe Is A 'Giant Brain'

Huffington Post UK  |  By Michael Rundle 

The idea of the universe as a 'giant brain' has been proposed by scientists - and science fiction writers - for decades.

But now physicists say there may be some evidence that it's actually true. In a sense.

According to a study published in Nature's Scientific Reports, the universe may be growing in the same way as a giant brain - with the electrical firing between brain cells 'mirrored' by the shape of expanding galaxies.

The results of a computer simulation suggest that "natural growth dynamics" - the way that systems evolve - are the same for different kinds of networks - whether its the internet, the human brain or the universe as a whole.

A co-author of the study, Dmitri Krioukov from the University of California San Diego, said that while such systems appear very different, they have evolved in very similar ways.

The result, they argue, is that the universe really does grow like a brain.

The study raises profound questions about how the universe works, Krioukov said.
"For a physicist it's an immediate signal that there is some missing understanding of how nature works," he told Space.com.

The team's simulation modelled the very early life of the universe, shortly after the big bang, by looking at how quantum units of space-time smaller than subatomic particles 'networked' with each other as the universe grew.

They found that the simulation mirrored that of other networks. Some links between similar nodes resulted in limited growth, while others acted as junctions for many different connections.

For instance, some connections are limited and similar - like a person who likes sports visiting many other sports websites - and some are major and connect to many other parts of the network, like Google and Yahoo.

No, it doesn't quite mean that the universe is 'thinking' - but as has been previously pointed out online, it might just mean there's more similarity between the very small and the very large than first appearances suggest.

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One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light-years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain. The other is a simulated image of the universe. Together they suggest the surprisingly similar patterns found in vastly different natural phenomena. ~David Constantine

Mark Miller, a doctoral student at Brandeis University, is researching how particular types of neurons in the brain are connected to one another. By staining thin slices of a mouse's brain, he can identify the connections visually. The image above (left) shows three neuron cells (two red and one yellow) and their connections.

An international group of astrophysicists used a computer simulation last year to recreate how the universe grew and evolved. The simulation image (right) above is a snapshot of the present universe that features a large cluster of galaxies (bright yellow) surrounded by thousands of stars, galaxies and dark matter (web).