'You are not the centre of the universe!'

You may have heard this statement before. People say this when they want to communicate that somebody is being self obsessed. But cosmologically, can you be the exact centre of entire universe?

Does the centre of the universe actually exist?

We all know about the big bang, how our universe was born 14 Billion years ago. From a small singularity, it just exploded into what we see today.

But we often imagine the big bang incorrectly, it wasn't an 'explosion', because an explosion requires a space to explode into.

In the beginning, there was nothing, 
In the end, there was everything.

The concept of space didn't make sense before the big bang. We imagine the vacuum of space that the big bang dumped all the matter, energy, stars and galaxies into but with birth of universe, the concept of space was born.

The universe is big. Mind bogglingly big. Possibly, infinite. Uncountably infinite.

We often imagine the observable universe to be spherical. If that were true, then the space would have a boundary, which it doesn't. Its infinite. Only our field of observation is spherical, because the earth is spherical. But the big bang didn't occur at a single point and that point isn't in the universe.

Imagine it this way, take a graph paper. 2 dimensionally, it is an infinite plane. The graph paper has boundaries but the paper only is a small sample representation of 1 plane of the entire 3 dimensional universe.

So, if on a cartesian graph, with regular 1mm intervals, we mark a point somewhere in the graph and take it XY(0,0) then that is the centre of origin.

The two axis X and Y originate from the 0,0. But you mark 0,0 at any point on the graph paper, in the centre or the left side bottom corner, or anywhere. The cartesian plane is infinite on both axes.

Apply this principle you used on a 2 dimensional cartesian plane to a 3 dimensional universal space.

You can choose any point of origin (0,0,0). It isn't bound by any law of science that you can't take the (0,0,0) randomly.

Therefore, you can, literally, cosmologically, mathematically, astronomically, physically, quantum mechanically and philosophically be the centre of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE. You just have to assume you are the (0,0,0) and voila! You are the centre of the universe. The point of origins. The centre to everything. 

But then again, even if you are the centre of the universe, remember that the world doesn't revolve around you and therefore you shouldn't be so self centered even if you are central to everything. 

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In  my first post on this blog, I left the reader with two questions,

What is the purpose of life?




We should always question the question before thinking about answering the question.

Why did you even assume that life has a purpose? 

What is meant by...a purpose? And why would life have any purpose?
When we think about our life and our existence, we like to fancy ourselves as the 'main character' of a story that runs in real time. Now, it is not being self centered or wrong but just a normal psychological perspective that we see ourselves to be the main 'hero' of the story. The story of our life. Why wouldn't we be the main character of 'our' life? It gives us comfort to think that we have a purpose, to think that we were created for a reason and we shall spend our life time achieving that purpose. But...what is it? Getting your dream job? Visiting the world? Loving, marrying and making a family? Reproduction?

Those are the purposes that we give to ourselves.

But I am not talking about the purpose of our lives, but the purpose of THE life. The biological entity known, as life. YOU give purpose to YOUR life.

Coming back to biological life.

We have seen different programs on tv about, birds migrating thousands of kilometers or polar bears hibernating the cold harsh winter or ants constructing colonies and feeding their young or perhaps a plant competing with other plants for sunlight on the floor of a tropical forest under the dense canopy of green where the monkeys constantly forage for berries or humans trying to build capitalise on resources.


But why? Why are we in a constant struggle for food, survival and reproduction? What purpose do we serve by doing all that?

Why do animals, plants, microorganisms and all forms of life do what they do? And for what?

Let's look at this from another angle. Let us cease our search for the direct answer but observe what every living entity is trying to accomplish.

It might be so that the whole point of life is to reproduce.


I mean, it makes sense, every living entity out there, is trying to pass down its genes into the next generation. We eat, survive, reproduce and die. The one who is fit will survive and will pass down its genes and hence the its genetic code will survive.




We could analyse life by looking at the code of life, the genome. We are born, we live and then die. That's the end for one organism. But if we find success in reproduction, the code within us, carries on; carries onto the next generation and contribute to the grand story of evolution.

But then again, for what?

What purpose does evolution fulfill? Say, in a million years, earth life forms are so evolved that the earthlings might just conquer the entire galaxy. But then what? Is our entire existence preparing us for some deep future event? But why? Does it take the plane of complexity of matter and order to a next level?


Wait a minute.

Matter and order.
Life is nothing special than matter.

If you notice a very peculiar behaviour of the universe you will observe that everything, and by that I mean, every thing in existence itself, is trying to lower in energy. The second ubiquitous truth of existence is that everything follows the second law of thermodynamics.

Ah, now you are wondering what was the second law of thermodynamics again? I remember I read it in high school, but can't recall it.
No worries, I got your back.

"The entropy or the randomness in a cyclic process or a closed system is always increasing or remains stable." 

"The entropy of the universe is constantly increasing."

Entropy is basically a measure of randomness. (Yeah, I know, it is weird.)



Here, dS is the change in the entropy.

These are a few ways the law could be stated.
Now, compare this law to life and evolution. If the randomness or the disorder of the cosmos is increasing, then how is life so organised?

Why do we have intricate cellular machinery like a flagella (Who says life hasn't evolved wheels for locomotion)

or DNA replication, transcription, translation and all the organised cells, tissues, organs and organ systems.

If the second law of thermodynamics dictates that the randomness of the universe should be increasing (Assuming the universe is a closed system, that is a whole another aspect of cosmology) shouldn't life behave in such a manner? After all, life is matter and a very integral part of the universe. Life can't break the laws of physics. Then how come we are trying to get more and more 'energy' and everything else...the non living realm is trying to lower its energy and increase its entropy.

This is called the 'Schrodinger's paradox'

 

In his famous book 'what is life?' nobel laureate Erwin Schrodinger describes life to go against law of entropy. He argues that life, contrary to common matter, decreases entropy by feeding on 'negentropy'.
It is argued that this property differentiates life from the non living realm.

Now, of course, this is an abstract concept and will require various considerations like, the second law of thermodynamics only follows in a closed system, but can the environment be considered as closed system.

However, bioenergist Albert lehninger (Yes, the one who wrote the bible of biochemistry) argues that the order produced within cells as they grow and divide is more than compensated for by the disorder they create in their surroundings in the course of growth and division. In short, according to Lehninger, "living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from their surroundings free energy, in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an equal amount of energy as heat and entropy."

Therefore biochemists, while studying the energy changes in a living things often use Gibbs free energy rather than entropy. 

So, what does this mean? 

It means that life is an entity which increases the net entropy in spite of being in such order. 

Let us do a thought experiment. 
Consider you are on a field with only one tree. Now, analyse the exchange of matter you and the tree have. The tree absorbs sunlight, performs photosynthesis, makes sugars, stores them in the fruit. You eat the fruit, and combust it to produce energy and carbon dioxide (Respiration), now the plant absorbs the carbon dioxide you produce and perform photosynthesis, and produce a fruit again. 



So the atoms that constituted the plant at one point, now start to constitute you and vice versa. This is a continuous cyclic process. 

So if atoms (matter) are leaving your body and entering the plant, and plant's atoms are leaving its body and getting into yours, at what point would you stop being YOU and composed of atoms of the plant? And at what point does the plant start becoming 'you'? 

In fact, every 11 years, human body replaces every single atom present in the body. So are you the same person you were, 11 years ago?

Lehninger said, that the entropy or the 'chaos' that we create by converting complex molecules into carbon dioxide is increasing the overall entropy.

And that is it.

The purpose.

If you really think of what life really is, you might say that life is a very complex, evolving catalyst for chemical reactions that increase the overall entropy of the universe.

Chemical reactions happen, because of increasing entropy in the first place.

Change... happens because of entropy of the universe increases.
The arrow of time thus, is said to go forward.

Life is a biochemical machine that operates to increase randomness of the universe. That is why we exist. We are a result of, and going towards, the ever increasing entropy.

Every chemical reaction happens in your body happens because of matter trying to get itself to its lowest energy state, thus increasing entropy.

It doesn't matter if we reproduce or have some moral, religious, spiritual or scientific epiphanies, the cosmos wants, and is in the process of, decreasing the energy of the universe and increasing the entropy.

We are a part of the universe and hence we are going to follow the laws set by the cosmos.


There is no purpose. There is just the 'happening', the process by which the cosmos is governed.

And we are a part of it.

We are in a universe which is infinitely big and the utter indifference of the universe towards a tiny wet ball of dirt away in some galaxy speaks volumes of how insignificant, life and we are.

The cosmos doesn't care if you have a purpose. So why should you?

The cosmos just exists. It is bound by the laws of physics and entropy and therefore we are bound by the laws of physics and entropy.

Perhaps life doesn't have a purpose. We don't have any purpose. All the things around you don't have a purpose.

How does that make you feel?

Scared? Sad? Exhausted from all the brain work I am putting you through?

Well, answer me this,

Do you really want a purpose?

It might be sad that there is no purpose to life, but let us say that there is, would you really want it? 

Think about it this way, we breed and raise animals and plants for many commercial activities. So their sole purpose for existence is to satisfy our consumer market. They were created for a reason, they will do what we want them to do and then they will die. Like lambs to slaughter or flowers to harvest. 


So is purposelessness really such a bad notion?

This makes living just as equally good or worse as death.

Because in the end, it doesn't really matter, the entropy has increased either way.

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