The universe built on proven physical laws - the unity of the microworld, macroworld and megaworld

Chapter 5
GRAVITATION AND THE GLOBAL STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE:
RELATIVISTIC   COSMOLOGY
5.1. Basic starting points and principles of cosmology
5.2. Einstein's and deSitter's universe. Cosmological constant.
5.3. Fridman's dynamic models of the universe
5.4. Standard cosmological model. Big Bang.
5.5. Microphysics and cosmology. Inflationary universe.
5.6. The future of the universe
5.7. Anthropic principle and existence of multiple universes
5.8. Astrophysics - cosmology - physics - nature. What do we know and what do we not know yet ?

5.8. Astrophysics - cosmology - physics - nature. What do we know and what do we not know yet ?

Is is gratifying to say, that contemporary relativistic cosmology has already emerged from the stage of unfounded speculations and idle theorizing (it is no longer "mythology"...) and has become an important part and extension of astrophysics and the natural sciences. Can give a consistent picture of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole; this picture is built on the proven laws of physics and its predictions agree well with the observations. Let us therefore consider some general aspects of the relationship between cosmology and physics.

  The methodology of physical cognition consists of three main elements: observation , experiment and theory . In the early stages of the development of physics, the first of these methods - observation - played a decisive role; let us recall only Newton's law of gravitation based on astronomically observed Kepler's laws of planetary motion. However, Newton was already doing mechanical experiments that resulted in his three basic laws of motion. With the further development of physics, accompanied by a profound improvement in experimental techniques, the role of observation declined rapidly. Especially since the early 20th century, when for the reveal the laws of the microstructure of matter, it was necessary to use more and more sophisticated and costly experiments (eg powerful yet accurate accelerators in conjunction with subtle detection electronics), the method of observation seemed already entirely historic and the relationship between physics and astronomy is one-way: physics in its laboratories reveals the fundamental laws of nature, that allow to explain and predict astronomically observed phenomena in space.

Fig.5.12. A wide range of sizes of objects in our world, explored by various fields of physics and natural sciences using various tools.
(it is discussed in more detail in §1.0 "Physics - fundamental natural science", passage "Methods and tools of nature research", monograph "Nuclear physics and ionizing radiation physics")

  In recent years, however, this relationship has begun to change. Indeed, contemporary relativistic cosmology has shown that the universe, in its very hot and dense initial phase, was a kind of unique "laboratory" of high-energy physics, in which the processes took place intensively, that we are now trying to observe with the greatest effort on massive accelerators, and even those phenomena whose laboratory implementation is not hopeful in the foreseeable future. The cosmological consequences of current theories of elementary particles (especially unitary theories) have proven to be so clear and obvious, that their confrontation with astronomical observations distant universe *) makes it possible to set strong constraints on the parameters of these theories of elementary particles, and sometimes even their verification or rejection.
*) In addition to optical observations (including spectroscopic) with increasingly larger and more powerful telescopes and radio telescopic observations using large antenna systems (interconnected), it is primarily a detailed measurement of the properties of microwave relic radiation - its homogeneity, fluctuations (depending on the angular distance and wavelength), polarization. Already at the time of the separation of radiation from matter, there were germs of future structures in the universe, so these photons passed through places with different gravitational potentials, which led to small changes in their energy and wavelength - a slight cooling or heating. These fluctuations should be visible even now, as slightly warmer and colder "spots" in the otherwise isotropic distribution of relic radiation - they represent a kind of "paleontological imprint" of the structures of the early universe - see §5.4, part "Microwave relic radiation - a messenger of early space news". The temperature difference is very small, of the order of 10^-5 degrees, so the relevant methods of their data measurement are constantly being improved *). In the future, then the detection of primordial gravitational waves (see §2.7 "Gravitational waves", passage "Detection of gravitational waves"), or detection of relict neutrinos (for details on neutrinos and their detection, see eg the passage "neutrino" in §1.2" Radioactivity "of the book"Nuclear Physics and Physics of Ionizing Radiation").
*) For a detailed study of relic radiation, the COBE satellite (Cosmic Background Explorer) was launched in 1989, in 2001 WMAP satellite (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe), in 2007, an even more sensitive PLANCK probe was launched.

At first glance, it might seem that nuclear and particle physics, dealing with the smallest known particles of matter, has very little to do with cosmology, which, on the other hand, examines the largest possible objects in the universe. However, current research refutes this view. Both in the form of elementary particles and in cosmology, it was possible to develop so-called standard models, which explain very well the results of almost all physical experiments and astronomical observations. On the other hand, they raise new questions and problems - how to "find common ground of things"?
  At present, in the mutual interest of physics and cosmology are the fundamental principles of our world. In cosmology, these are questions of the origin of our universe, the basic laws which control him, his ultimate destiny. In particle physics, these are questions of the nature of matter: how did matter originate ?; what is its structure - what are its basic building "stones" and how do these interact ?; what are the mechanisms of these building blocks that create such complex objects as galaxies, stars, planets - and ultimately living matter? This creates a very remarkable connection between the microworld and the megaworld...
  All the most basic aspects of matter and the universe seem to rooted in those first prime fractions of a second after the Big Bang, when the properties of the physical interactions themselves were formed. The laws of physics that prevailed in these extreme conditions are not yet well known - we do not know what the structure of space and time was then, what was the number of dimensions, how matter was formed. At that time, the macroworld and the cosmos, then non-existent in the present sense, intertwined with the microworld of quantum laws (cf. also the passage "Very Early Universe" in §5.4). Some aspects of these phenomena may never be clarified..?..
  However, some current (and especially future) concepts of unitary theories of fields, interactions and elementary particles (mentioned in Appendix B, especially in §B.6 "Unification of fundamental interactions. Supergravity. Superstrings."), could shed some light here, in co-production with experiments of high-energy particle interactions on successively built large accelerators (see " Charged particle accelerators "). The finer the details of the structure of matter we want to penetrate - and thus also the greater the depth of knowledge of the structure of the universe - the higher the energy of the particles we must use. It can be said that high-energy particles are certain "probes" into the deepest details of the structure of matter and at the same time into the earliest moments of the evolution of the universe.

  Two seemingly very remote parts of physics - the theory of elementary particles examining the smallest objects and cosmology examining the largest of the whole universe - thus combine to form a unified picture of the world. The successes of research in one area can be very penetrating in the other area of knowledge. It is this dialectical unity of the microworld, macroworld and megaworld that is the characteristic trend in contemporary fundamental physics.

What do we not know about the universe, the essence of matter and nature yet ?
In chapters 1.1, 4.1-4.9, 5.1-5.7 (in co-production with the treatise "Nuclear Physics and the Physics of Ionizing Radiation") we discussed in detail mostly impressive achievements in the knowledge of the structure and evolution of the universe - the formation and development of stars, gravitational collapse, neutron stars and black holes, the structure and formation of galaxies, the expansion of the universe, the very early universe, primordial and stellar nucleosynthesis, the unification of interactions in unitary field theories. All this is certainly very beautiful and beneficial from the point of view of our knowledge of nature, the universe and the possibilities of technological applications for the benefit of improving life here on Earth and possibly its expansion into space.
  For fair objectivity, however, it is probably worth mentioning the "other side of the coin" - what we lack for complete knowledge. Openly admit what we do not know about the universe and the nature of matter yet! Here we outline a list (certainly incomplete) of questions about the universe and the physical nature of matter, which our scientific knowledge cannot yet answer :
=> How did the universe originate ?
We have no idea yet about the "mechanism" of the origin or creation of the universe. It is only known that in the beginning the universe was very hot and dense. And we know most of the mechanisms of how it gradually cooled and transformed its material content to its current cold state with a very low average material content (a detailed analysis is in §5.4 "Standard cosmological model. Big Bang, Formation of the structure of the universe."). This is supported by astronomical observations and laboratory experiments on particle accelerators. However, we cannot say anything about the very beginnings in the first approximately 10^-43 -10^-36 seconds..!..
=> What is the essence of gravity ?
The classical Newtonian concept of gravity, which works well in practice, has been generalized in the general theory of relativity, which works perfectly in the entire universe, and describes it as curved spacetime. However, the reason why matter curves spacetime in its surroundings is not known. So far, we do not know what gravity is, only how it works. Perhaps the future complete unitary field theory will answer this, but from the opposite side: how do "condensations" in the geometry of spacetime create what appears to us as matter? (§B.6 "Unification of fundamental interactions. Supergravity. Superstrings.", passage "Superunification and supergravity").
=> Why is there a large amount of matter in the universe and almost no antimatter ?
According to the laws of the symmetrical formation of particles and antiparticles, at the beginning of the universe both should have been created in the same ratio of 1:1, which would lead to complete annihilation and the universe would contain only radiation. This clearly did not happen, which indicates about 10^-9 more matter than antimatter; all the matter that exists in the universe resulted from this slight excess after annihilation. We do not know for sure why this asymmetry of matter and antimatter occurred.
Some possibilities for the origin of this baryon asymmetry are discussed in §5.4, the passage "Baryon asymmetry of the universe", from another point of view in the section "Antiparticles - antiatoms - antimatter - antiworlds" §1.5 of the monograph "Nuclear physics and the physics of ionizing radiation".
=> What is the internal structure of the "elementary" particles of the microworld ?
Direct investigation of the "inside" of particles of the microworld is not possible. This is possible only by the destructive method of mutual collisions of particles in accelerators, while studying new particles that fly out. In this way, it was possible to reveal the internal quark-gluon structure of hadrons, especially protons and neutrons. For other hadrons - pions, kaons, hyperons - their quark structure is assumed in a model, based on analogy (cf. "Are elementary particles really elementary?"). For leptons, such as electrons or muons, no internal structure has been discovered, they are considered to be "point". Their observed properties, such as spin or magnetic moment, are considered to be their inherent characteristics, without proper explanation. So we have to admit that we do not yet know the nature of most of the particles that make up our world..!.. This explanation is expected (probably in the more distant future) from unitary field theories (§B.6 "Unification of fundamental interactions. Supergravity. Superstrings.").
=> The incomprehensible incomprehensibility of quantum physics ?
In contemporary physics, there are a number of findings, theories, hypotheses that deal with phenomena in the deep microworld or very distant universe - in areas inaccessible to our direct observation and experience. In attempts to understand and explain them, ideas and concepts appear that are difficult for our "common sense" (which has developed from observing the surrounding macroworld) to understand. One such area is the special and especially general theory of relativity (which is sometimes said to be "incomprehensibly-comprehensible"), to which this entire book of ours "Gravity, Black Holes and the Physics of Spacetime" is essentially dedicated. Even less understandable for us is quantum physics - which is sometimes said to be "incomprehensibly-incomprehensible"! These hidden aspects are discussed from various perspectives in §1.1 "Atoms and Atomic Nuclei", part "Quantum Nature of the Microworld" of the book "Nuclear Physics and Physics of Ionizing Radiation". Quantum physics is extremely successful for investigating the structure of matter, as well as in applications, but its fundamental inner nature is hidden from our understanding by a mystery...
=> How did the first galaxies and large black holes form ?
The current standard astrophysical mechanisms for the formation of the first galaxies are based on the situation after the end of the "dark ages" in the universe about 200 million years after the big bang, when clouds of hydrogen + helium gas began to cluster around the initial inhomogeneities (originating from density fluctuations of the post-inflationary period) by gravitational attraction. A large-scale structure of the network concentration of matter around large voids was gradually formed - see the pictures in §5.4, the passage "Formation of the large-scale structure of the universe" and "Mass and distribution of matter in the universe". In them, gravitational contraction then produced the first large protostars that transformed into 1st generation stars - galaxies were formed (§5.4., passage "Structure and evolution of galaxies"). These 1st generation stars were mostly significantly larger than today's stars, about several hundred M¤. They lived only relatively briefly, several million years, and then exploded as supernovae, which enriched the interstellar space with heavier elements. All of this is probably correct in principle. However, the latest observations show that the earliest galaxies are somewhat "more advanced" than would be expected from their age. So perhaps we do not yet know the exact models of galaxy formation well..?..
  Small and medium-sized black holes are formed by the gravitational collapse of sufficiently massive stars. There were a large number of these in early galaxies. By gradual merging of "stellar" black holes, black holes with masses of several thousand M¤ can be formed. Supermassive black holes of 10⁶-10⁹ M_¤ could grow to these masses in billions of years. However, they are also observed in much earlier galaxies. Could they perhaps form in a non-stellar way, by direct gravitational collapse of large dense clouds of gas (the possibilities of the formation of giant black holes are discussed in more detail in §4.8, passage "How did supermassive black holes form?")? But we do not know the exact mechanism...
=> What is inside a black hole - singularity or quantum fluctuations ?
Black holes are probably the most mysterious objects in the universe. Smaller black holes of stellar mass are formed at the end of the evolution of sufficiently massive stars, which, after consuming all their thermonuclear fuel, are no longer able to resist their gravity and succumb to complete gravitational collapse (discussed in detail in §4.2, passage "Complete gravitational collapse. Black hole"). In the center of galaxies, there are also giant black holes with more than a million times greater mass (their formation is discussed in §4.8, passage "How did central supermassive black holes form?").
  A common feature of all black holes is that they are surrounded by an event horizon, from under which nothing, not even light, can escape. And in the center of a black hole, according to mathematical models of a black hole (the simplest is the Schwarzschild black hole), there is a point where there is an infinite curvature of spacetime, infinite gradients of gravitational forces, everything is destroyed here - the so-called spacetime singularity (§3.7 "Spacetime singularities"). According to mathematical models, all collapsing matter should end up in this singularity, even matter that was later absorbed by the black hole. This is certainly an unacceptable result according to the classical theory of black holes.
  According to quantum physics, nothing so "pathological" as a singularity should happen. In the immediate vicinity of the center of a black hole, quantum fluctuations of the geometry of spacetime would strongly increase, up to fluctuations of topology, so that the spatial singularity would "dissolve in the topological foam" of quantum fluctuations..?.. (discussed in §B.4 "Quantum geometrodynamics").
So we don't actually know what's inside a black hole, at its center..?..
=> What is dark matter ?
We observe that the gravitational effect in galaxies and galaxy clusters is stronger than would correspond to the usual glowing+non-glowing matter contained there (§5.6, section "Hidden-dark matter"). So there must be some "substance" that exhibits gravity, but which we do not see astronomically. We call it "dark" because it does not glow and "matter" because it interacts gravitationally in the same way as matter. But we do not know what it is. It was thought that it could be hard-to-see objects made of dust, brown dwarfs or black holes in the halo of galaxies; this has not been confirmed yet. Physically, it seems that dark matter could be made of weakly interacting massive particles WIMPs, which gravitate due to their mass, but apart from gravity, exhibit only weak interactions. Their detection by nuclear and radiation physics methods is therefore very difficult; despite intensive efforts over many decades, it has not yet been possible...
=> What is dark energy ?
When astronomically measuring the rate of retreat of very distant type Ia supernovae, we surprisingly observe that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, instead of its expansion being slowed down by the attractive gravitational effect of matter. Therefore, in addition to gravity, there must be "something" in the universe that acts in the opposite direction, against gravity. It is astronomically invisible, so we call it "dark" and "energy", because it supplies the energy needed for acceleration. However, we do not know what it is? It may be an inherent property of space-time (such as the cosmological constant), or some kind of "quintessence" (dark energy and the accelerated expansion of the universe are discussed in detail in §5.6, section "Accelerated expansion of the universe? Dark energy?", "The nature of dark energy?").
=> Is there a direction of time ?
All fundamental physical laws are time invariant, no equations in physics contain a time direction. We can apply them in one direction or the other and there is nothing to show which direction is correct. A fundamental exception is the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which as a statistical principle shows that natural processes spontaneously proceed in the direction of increasing entropy, as a measure of the disorder of the system. Physical statistics explains this by saying that the number of disordered states of a system of particles is always significantly higher than the number of ordered states. Biochemical processes of life seemingly go against this current of increasing entropy (discussed in §1.1., passage "Motion of microparticles in ensembles. Thermodynamics" of the monograph "Nuclear physics and physics of ionizing radiation").
  New aspects regarding the passage of time were brought by the special and general theories of relativity - it is summarized in the syllabus "Time travel: fantasy or physical reality?".
We are forced to admit that we don't really know what time is..?..
=> How did primordial life arise at the molecular and cellular level ? Extraterrestrial life ?
Biologists have well researched the evolution of the amazing diversity of life, chemists have well researched the complex biochemical processes at the molecular-cellular level. Although much remains to be explored here, the essence of life is already well understood (see §5.2., section "Cells - basic units of living organisms" in the book "Nuclear Physics and Ionizing Radiation").
  However, we do not know how primordial life arose at the molecular chemical pre-cellular level, including the establishment of reproduction and inheritance RNA->DNA? And also whether and how life could develop outside Earth, on other planets in the universe? And how to search for it ?
  It is discussed in more detail in the work "The Anthropic Principle or Cosmic God", sections "How did life arise?" and "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life in the Universe"; possibilities or the end of the biological form of our life are discussed in the passage "Tranhumanism - liberation from the "slavery" of biology?".
=> How will the universe end in the future ?
Astrophysics and cosmology are concerned in detail with the study of the evolution of space objects and the universe as a whole. The basic astronomical knowledge is the current expansion of the universe (individual possibilities are analyzed in the introductory part §5.6 "The Future of the Universe."). Two possibilities for the course of this expansion were considered :
1. That in the future the expansion will stop and turn into contraction - the universe will disappear by collapse, a "big crash".
2. The expansion will continue continuously to infinity, but will be more or less slowed down by the attractive gravity of matter. ....
Currently, option 1. has already been abandoned, current astronomical observations of very distant supernovae of type Ia also show that :
3. The universe is constantly expanding: the deceleration of the expansion lasted for the first about 9 billion years, but then the expansion began to accelerate -> the universe is now expanding at an accelerated rate.
We do not know whether and how it will all end. Various scenarios of "great cooling - heat death of the universe" or even "big rip" due to the exponentially increasing rate of expansion of the universe are being discussed..?.. This is related to the as yet unknown properties of dark energy. Discussion again in §5.6, section "Accelerated expansion of the universe?", passage "....".
  A number of unsolved questions will certainly exist constantly - because solving one problem usually raises other questions. We should openly admit this natural limitation of our knowledge. Some experts, focused somewhat "scholastically" on university teaching, have certain problems with this. They try to be "very clever" and some unexplained phenomena, problems, properties, tend to replace "axioms" that students have "to buffoon"; it sounds learned and scientific. Sometimes it can't be done any other way, but there should still be some room for independent thinking and an attempt at an informal, illustrative understanding of the real essence...

At the end of the chapter on cosmology, we will briefly mention some rather non-standard and hypothetical speculations, that we did not manage to fully include in the continuity of interpretation of astrophysics and cosmology. To all 4 questions mentioned below, an adequate skeptical answer is "Probably not!".
"Holographic" universe ? Probably not !
Loss of information in a black hole. Holographic principle.
In Chapter 4, we discussed the properties of black holes in detail. When a black hole is formed by gravitational collapse, all information about the individual properties of the collapsing matter is lost to the outside world, except for the total mass, charges and rotational momentum - §4.5 "A black hole has no hair", a black hole has no microscopic structure. He refers to this unusual situation as the "paradox of information loss" - see also the discussion in the final passage of chapter 4.7 "Quantum evaporation: return of matter from a black hole?". From the point of view of statistical physics (and information theory), entropy is a measure of the disorder of a given system [167]. This enormous amount of lost information is then a measure of the black hole's entropy. The proportionality between the surface of the horizon and the entropy of the absorbed matter was later given the rather misleading name "holographic principle" :
  Holographic principle
A holographic image in optics is created in such a way that a beam of coherent light (from a laser) is split into two parts, one of which hits the photographic layer directly, and the other part after reflection from the imaged object. Both of these beams interfere and create a structure of thin interference stripes on the photographic emulsion, carrying information about the phase differences of the two beams. If we then irradiate this two-dimensional image with coherent light (again from a laser), the reflected rays reconstruct the same phase differences that created the image - the impression of a three-dimensional image of the original object is created. The holographic image has the interesting property that even from a fragment of the hologram we can see the entire three-dimensional image, albeit with a lower resolution.
The two-dimensional surface of the black hole's horizon carries all the information (appropriately reduced - "the black hole has no hair") about the three-dimensional configurational masses absorbed in the black hole, just as a two-dimensional hologram carries information about a three-dimensional object. However, the similarity with holography ends here, because specific detailed information about the absorbed matter (except for the mass M, the momentum of the rotational moment J and possibly the electric charge Q) is lost and cannot be reconstructed in any way.
  However, some experts in the field of astrophysics and unitary field theories (started with G.'t Hooft and L.Susskind) liked the holographic idea and led them to believe that in a similar way all information about other systems, not only black holes, could be locate on the surface (area) of the area in which they are located. A thought experiment with a very large black hole could indirectly point to this, around whose horizon the usual laws of physics would apply as in a state of weightlessness, in a free-falling locally inertial system there would be only tiny tidal forces. Below the horizon, based on the holographic proportionality between the surface of the black hole's horizon and its entropy, we can imagine that all information about the matter inside is localized on the horizon, whose surface maintains information about the entire internal space..?..
  However, this interpretation is not very physically correct, because the theorem "a black hole has no hair" and the proportionality between the surface of the horizon and entropy applies to the outer, not the inner, space of the black hole..!..
  The "holographic principle" was further generalized in connection with the construction of superstring theory: "Information (degrees of freedom) about a system inside a volume V can be localized (encoded) on the surface ¶V of this volume, while the information density does not exceed one bit per Planck surface lp2".
  The holographic principle is generally the statement that information about an N-dimensional region (its interior) is encoded at the N-1 dimensional boundary of that region. Within the general theory of relativity, it is theoretically supported only at the horizons of black holes. In other cases, it is only an extrapolation and analogy - an unsubstantiated hypothesis... So the universe is apparently not "holographic". However, holographic concepts are sometimes used in different variants of superstring theory.

Is our entire universe inside a gigantic black hole ?
The development of black hole astrophysics in the 1960s - 1980s and the attractiveness of these "exotic" objects led to yet another bizarre hypothesis: That our entire universe (with all the galaxies, nebulae, stars, planets and other structures that can be seen through telescopes or inferred from detection of electromagnetic or corpuscular radiation and possibly gravitational waves) could be located inside a gigantic black hole, existing inside an even larger whole - the multiverse (however, there is no direct connection with the multiverse hypothesis in the previous §5.7 "Anthropic principle and the existence of multiple universes"). The origin of this universe could then be explained by an equally bizarre idea: that the Big Bang was a kind of "big bounce", where the gravitational collapse in the previous universe created a "wormhole" *), the outlet of which opened into a new expanding universe..?..
*) We critically discussed the questions of hypothetical wormholes and their relationship to black holes in §4.4., the passage "Wormholes - bridges to other universes?".
  So, all unverified assumptions. Furthermore, from an astrophysical point of view, it would not be consistent with the cosmological principle (discussed already in §5.1, passage "Cosmological principle") of global homogeneity and isotropy of the universe. In the outward direction, towards the horizon of the black hole, a sparser distribution of galaxies would be observed than towards the center, towards the "singularity". No "edge" of the universe at the horizon, nor condensation in the direction towards the center and possibly fall into the singularity, is not observed.
  Some astrophysicists like the idea of the universe inside a black hole, but mainly popularizers and those interested in the fields of philosophy, culture and social sciences, they find it exciting and mysterious. However, it does not correspond to the real universe that we observe and live in which...

The universe as a giant quantum computer ?
Successful analyzes and computer simulations of many processes in the universe using powerful computers with sophisticated software have given some authors the impression that this is not just a random sucsess of erudite astrophysicists and computer experts, but because the universe itself is a kind of gigantic software system, that we are just trying find out. And from the point of view of evolution, the Universe is a kind of autodidactic system..?.. Surely most experts do not mean this completely unfounded science fiction hypothesis literally, but rather metaphorically! "We could be living in the digital world depicted in the Matrix without knowing it" ..?.. Probably not! The literal hypothetical that "the universe is a computer" is definitely not true. Instead, a more plausible claim should be: "A number of processes in the universe can be software algorithmized" and analyzed on large computers (possibly quantum computers in the future), allowing them to better understand, simulate, and extrapolate into the future. Philosophically, this suggests that the universe is knowable in terms of the idea of the material unity of the world...

Cosmic consciousness - the universe as a "living thing" that is aware of itself ?
This sci-fi idea is too subjective and anthropomorphic to discuss in detail in our (astro)physics treatise.
  Astrophysics and cosmology view the universe as a barren and inhospitable place consisting almost entirely of empty space and inanimate matter. Life is extremely precious. On Earth, matter organized itself to a high level of complexity by special mechanisms and gradually created living beings ("Stars, planets, life in the universe"). We don't yet know if this has happened in other places in the universe...
Some philosophers, alternative naturalists and environmentalists, in the spirit of anthropomorphism, would like to see the universe not completely "dead", but the Universe as a living, evolving and learning system with which we humans would live in harmony with each other, because a better and sustainable life on Earth, without crises and devastation of the natural environment. This is certainly a positive motivation. However, somewhat misleading here can be the idealistic motivation against materialism, which wrongly equates objective "enlightened" scientific materialism, which helps to protect nature by better knowledge of reality, with vulgar human materialism, leading to selfishness, consumer society and the devastation of nature.
"The universe knows itself - through us" (C.Sagan)...
  Of course, there is no objective confirmation of this idea...

5.7. Anthropic principle and the existence of multiple universes		Appendix A: Mach's principle and general theory of relativity

Vojtech Ullmann