A COMMANDING (AND TERRIFYING) THEORY.
Contemporary Civilizations
An intriguing idea put out by a Harvard professor posits that higher
"class" lifeforms in a lab environment created our cosmos.
The bestselling author and former head of Harvard's astronomy department
Avi Loeb recently wrote an opinion piece for Scientific American in which he
suggested that a "advanced technological society" may have created the
cosmos in a laboratory. If accurate, he claimed, the origin theory would
reconcile the secular concept of quantum gravity with the religious notion
of a creator.
According to Loeb, "an intelligent civilisation may have invented a
technique that manufactured a newborn world out of nothing by quantum
tunneling" because our universe has a flat geometry and zero net
energy.
A-Grade Civilizations
The civilization categorization system is one of the most intriguing
theories put out in a piece full of them. According to Loeb, humans are
class C, a low-level technological society (or a civilization dependent on
its host star).
We'd be class B if and when technology advances to the point where we can
live without the Sun. We'd be top notch if we could engineer our own infant
worlds in a lab, just like our hypothetical founders.
Of course, there are several obstacles on our path; Loeb stated that the
main one is our inability to produce a "huge enough density of dark energy
inside a limited space." We would be able to join our hypothetical founders
in class A, nevertheless, if and when we ever arrive there.
In any case, the hypothesis is intriguing, inspiring, and perhaps a little
bit terrifying. We're probably not the only ones aiming for class A rank
either, if Loeb's earlier views are to be believed.
