Cosmic Embryogenesis

Clément Vidal
Centrum Leo Apostel (CLEA)
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition (ECCO)
Presented in the Embryo Physics Course, February 3, 2010


Modern science has shown that there are two trends at play in cosmic evolution. First, a tendency to produce more order, with the emergence of more and more complex systems, from galaxies, stars, planets, to plants, humans and our technological society. Secondly, the second law of thermodynamics applied to the universe as a whole implies that in the far-future the universe will irreversibly go toward a state of maximum disorder. The outcome of those two opposite trends remains unsettled.

Is there a development at play at the cosmological scale? Teilhard de Chardin suggested so when he coined the term “Cosmic Embryogenesis”. We look at nuclear and chemical synthesis as differentiation of atomic and chemical elements, which is now stabilized. The emergence of life is noticed to be a fundamental cosmological events, because it is the inflection point from the deceleration to the acceleration of evolutionary transitions. Furthermore, extrapolating the future of science, we show that the limit of scientific activity is a simulation of an entire universe. We argue that such a simulation can be seen as a blueprint (germ-line) for universe reproduction.



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