One of the big questions facing humanity is whether we are alone in a universe of many parallel universes.
Astrobiologists have begun to explore whether life could exist in other universes. (Image: Wikipedia)
In fact, using modern observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope, astrobiologists seem to have come very close to detecting signs of life on these “Ears” other earth” if they exist…
Now, a team of astronomers has even gone as far as to ask if life could exist in other universes? In other words, they want to know if we are alone in the multiverse. And they have developed a method to find the answer by looking at the habitable conditions inside other universes.
This question arises because the value of the fundamental constants that govern the laws of physics seem perfectly orchestrated to allow life to emerge. For example, carbon atoms form inside stars by the fusion of three helium nuclei. But the chances of these three particles colliding at the same time are very low, making it difficult for carbon to form in large quantities.
Resonance phenomenon
In 1954, astronomer Fred Hoyle argued that because the Earth has so much carbon – the material that makes up life – there must be a mechanism that drives its formation inside stars. Accordingly, he predicted an effect, which would later be known as the famous Hoyle resonance, which tripled the probability of collisions and the presence of carbon by several orders of magnitude. Based on Hoyle’s prediction, physicists soon began looking, and almost immediately found this effect.
However, this resonance has caused curiosity as it can only happen if the fundamental constants take on exact values, as if they had been fine-tuned to produce carbon.
Cosmologists have not yet discovered any reason for this fine-tuning, leading them to suggest that these constants could easily take on a different value, perhaps in other universes. But also because of this, in those places, humans will not appear. This is called the anthropological principle, the idea that humans can only evolve in a universe where fundamental constants permit.
All this leads to the idea of the multiverse – that it is possible to exist other universes with fundamental constants different from our own.
Now, McCullen Sandora at the Blue Marble Institute for Space Science in Seattle and colleagues question whether life could evolve in any other universe and if so, what conditions would support it.
In their current work, they, Sandora and colleagues investigate how nuclei form inside stars and the relative proportions of different elements that stars leave behind when they die. This mixture forms the basic ingredients of a new generation of planets.
Sandora and colleagues looked at how much metal is produced inside stars compared to other elements; about the Hoyle resonance and the amount of carbon it can produce in other universes; and on isotopes stability to see how long the key elements will last before decaying.
In each case, the team looked at how these properties might be different in other universes, or in other parts of our own universe, while still allowing for the occurrence of Live like the Earth.
Their answers place interesting limits on the places where life can emerge. They concluded that carbon levels should be moderate – too much or too little both make life less likely. “Our results indicate that carbon-rich or carbon-poor planets are uninhabitable,” said Sandora et al.
Information-carrying creatures
The researchers say that the amounts of other elements are less important. They say: “Life does not depend so much on nitrogen abundance. We also found suggestive but inconclusive evidence that metal-rich and phosphorus-poor planets are habitable.”
Sandora and colleagues’ work is part of a larger effort to map the conditions that make Earth-like life possible. They looked at stars that allow photosynthesis to happen on the right planets, how many Earth-like planets could form, and so on.
This is a bold project with predictions that will be difficult to test, even if the conditions it explores exist elsewhere in our universe.
Like many thoughts on extraterrestrial life, the project uses a narrow definition of life, built on carbon-based life forms found on Earth.
However, there may be more general definitions of life. For example, some researchers think of life in terms of the information it transmits from generation to generation through evolution. In this way, life is an evolved system for storing, processing, and transmitting information.
That puts a different perspective on life. Identifying universes in which this type of communication can take place is a useful plan for astrobiologists with a lot of free time.