Sara Walker joins our writer in a discussion on Time and Awareness
In a thought-provoking perspective that challenges traditional cosmic scales, the idea emerges that living organisms could be considered the largest structures in the universe when viewed through the lens of time. This notion hinges on the concept that the temporal existence and complexity of living entities outweighs spatial structures in cosmic terms.
While cosmic structures like galaxy clusters and cosmic webs span enormous distances in space, living organisms represent structures that persist and evolve over significant spans of time. They exhibit intricate, dynamic processes that unfold temporally, making them "largest" when measured along the time dimension.
This perspective contrasts traditional spatial scales, dominated by structures like galaxy clusters or cosmic webs, with a time-based viewpoint where the defining scale is the enduring and temporally complex nature of a system.
The modern technosphere, a result of the integration of life and technology on Earth, might be the largest object in time that we currently know about. This integrated structure is not confined to space but extends through time.
The universe's growth in size necessitates the incorporation of randomness from outside our causal structures to accommodate the future. The universe expands not only in space but also in time, driving the expansion of causation, recursion, and information.
Time constantly bifurcates, generating new structures that locally construct the future. The universe, when viewed in terms of its temporal dimensions, is vast and complex. The physical size of the Earth has remained constant for 4 billion years, while an exponentially increasing amount of causation is packed into the same volume of space.
Living objects, when considered in terms of their temporal dimensions, are among the largest structures in the universe. Our ability to understand each other and communicate effectively is due to our close proximity in time, as we didn't diverge early in the history of the universe. These large temporal structures, like the global technosphere, are not separate but deeply integrated with the systems that generated them.
When viewed through a lens of time, the planet Earth is one of the biggest things in the universe. We, as a collection of all possible versions, are bundled together into a coherent, deterministic structure. Free will emerges from being a deterministic structure living in a random background, allowing us to select possible futures.
Despite the philosophical nature of this idea, it draws from the difference between static spatial extent and dynamic temporal persistence and complexity. Living entities represent ongoing complex systems that manifest their "largeness" in the duration and unfolding of their processes, rather than just spatial size.
In essence, living systems are "big" not spatially like galaxies or superclusters, but in how they extend and complexly unfold through time, making them conceptually the universe’s largest structures when viewed along the time axis rather than purely space.
[1] Tully, R. B., et al. (2015). The cosmic web of galaxies. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 53, 299-338. [2] Springel, V., et al. (2005). Simulations of galaxy formation in a cold dark matter universe: The Millennium run. The Astrophysical Journal, 626, 173-217.
- The modern technosphere, born from the union of life and technology on Earth, could be regarded as the largest structure in the universe when considered through the lens of time, as it persists and evolves over significant periods.
- When viewed in terms of temporal dimensions, the planet Earth is among the biggest structures in the universe, for it not only maintains a constant physical size but also burgeons with an exponentially increasing amount of causation, information, and persistence in the same volume of space over 4 billion years.
