Dark Matter & Intelligence (General)

by dhw, Monday, January 09, 2012, 14:52 (4510 days ago)

An article in yesterday’s Sunday Times announces: “Scientists find cosmic glue”, with the sub-heading: “Astronomers now think that threads of dark matter may be all that hold the universe together.”

The basic argument is: “The old idea of billions of galaxies floating in space with nothing but a void between them is being replaced by something much more complex, where galaxies form within filaments of dark matter that link them together in a vast cosmic ‘spider’s web’.”

Before I start to speculate, let me quote the conclusion: “Perhaps the biggest mystery concerning dark matter is what it consists of. The fact that it does not interact with light or, apparently, with any other known matter, suggests dark matter is composed of an entirely novel kind of particle. Unfortunately, despite the implication that billions of these particles must be passing through our bodies every minute, scientists have yet to detect one.”

Unfortunate indeed. It’s called “dark” matter because it's non-luminous, but we should always keep in mind that it’s also “dark” because nobody has a clue what it is, and its existence is a matter of inference and nothing else. There may be no such thing.

However, let’s suppose that there is. Under The Intelligent Cell, I drew attention to bacteria on the sea floor that are connected by “a network of microbial nanowires” which allow “communities of bacteria to act as one superorganism”. Each of us is also a superorganism (my wife might not agree!) linking together whole communities of cells. The actions of these communities suggest an intelligence that binds them together via a network of electric currents. This binding intelligence – which is difficult to separate from our identity – remains ours, and our bodies are tuned finely enough to go on functioning despite (or because of?) the process of cell death and renewal which continues throughout our life. The nature and source of this intelligence have so far proved impossible to define. They are “dark”.

There’s nothing new in the idea that the universe too might be a superorganism, but a superorganism has to be connected up, which is why this new theory of linking filaments gives us food for thought. The cosmic “cells” also undergo a continual process of death and renewal – over a vastly different time scale from ours, of course – but the universe continues to function in the mode that some folk call “fine tuning”. Dark matter might be the cosmic equivalent of the nanowires, while the unidentified “intelligence” that directs the bacteria and indeed all other living creatures, including ourselves, might also be the force that operates the interlinked universe. Eventually we die, and eventually – again over a vastly different time scale – maybe our own part of the universe will die, or the whole of our universe will die, but in the meantime, might not the microcosm be in the image of the macrocosm? Just speculating!...