Although, right there, I got it wrong in the title. I'd stop reading now, if I were you.
It’s a strange thing, learning about reality. I’ve done a bit of science, my undergrad was pretty weird, with computer science, organic chemistry, animal behaviour, physiology, genetics, proteins, transgenics. I don’t claim to be a master of any of them, but all of them seem to rely on a very basic thing. Basic only in the sense that it is basal to life, something that underpins it, chemistry and physics as well as far as my own limited understanding of it goes. Not simple basic, but something complex and extraordinary. Something so ordinary that we do it every day, compulsively, enthusiastically at times. A driving force, perhaps The driving force of our universe.
We use Energy.
We are no less part of the universe then a rock or empty space, because what we share is the flow of energy. From where it is most concentrated, to where it is less, that is the heart-beat of our world. It won’t come as a shock to you to find out that our sun is the source of virtually all biotic energy consumed and exchanged on our planet. It is the well-spring, providing a glorious tide of energy sweeping past us, if only we had wit enough to grab it. Earth rides the wave between deep space and the surface of a stable fusion reaction suspended in space. Imagine how deeply cold the void at our backs must be, to have to sit so close to our star.
Life is a strange thing, a crossing of streams in a primordial ocean, a divine event, who can say for sure how it came to be? A strange thing indeed, this concoction of ordered chemicals, able to exist only in the barest of crevices in all the vastness of space. In brief terms, life can be described as dynamic, responsive system capable of reacting to and countering catastrophic changes to its own physical state. How is such a thing possible? Vast energies are streaming by, doing their level best to sterilise our poor planet, and yet it can coherently transmit the ability to survive over and over again, learning all the while, in a haphazard way. Life fights back against the forces of disorder, by leaching energy from the universe around it. It is a system that lowers its local entropy by raising it elsewhere, with some lost as heat. Think of that as universe tax. Everything pays it, if it wants to stay in this universe. So, if you are running low on the energy which drives your suite of chemistry, pinch it off the the other bugger and give the taxman his share.
We, the squishy beings living on the shore of the solar system, are riding our own little energy wavelet. Life, it seems, is something like a surfing competition. Except in this competition, the wave you are riding is the only one you get, and everyone has a rifle. If you wipe-out, well, best not to think about it. The idea is to try to steal other people’s waves, grabbing on to a bigger one as yours dies. At this point the metaphor gets a little stretched, but imagine instead of stealing your opponent’s wave, you add it to your own and keep surfing.
All energy used by living things comes from the decay of energy from a higher state, to a lower one, snatching a handful of the stuff as it goes past. You, squishy being, are the sum of all of the energetic reactions going on inside you right now. You are riding a waterfall of energy, directing jets of spray at your ad hoc water wheels, powering matter around you into a higher energy state. As the splashing ripples outward, new patterns are formed, turn back on themselves and pass back through you.
Life is not, in fact, a wave, it rides a wave. The wave is complex and largely unknown to us, but we use it constantly, even in the very act to thinking about its existence. David Deutsch wrote in his book, The Fabric of Reality that life is a mechanism by which the universe knows itself, by building models in our heads and in our computers. Is something like life inevitable in a complex universe? To do the observing , making sure the cat in the box is dead or alive by, in fact checking the box, so to speak. Are we the cosmic equivalent of a roadie on a rock tour, checking the mic, possibly while smoking a cigarette?
Cosmic purpose aside, if one were to be pedantic about it the matter which makes up a living organism can be considered as a type of compressed energy, with its own special standing wave. So we are a sum of a sum of waves, sticking a curved ramp into the waterfall of mana raining from our star and directing the plume of water arching high into the air, making our own little wave splash out and around us. So it seems I was wrong twice, both times proved by my arch nemesis, myself. Oh cruel irony!
It’s inevitable; our universe only has one fate. If you told me you could find a thousand different ideas about what is to come, I’d be forced to believe you, if only because of the credulity of humankind in general. The one which rings true to me is the big crunch, for purely selfish notions only and not based on any actual knowledge. It satisfies some romantic impulse in me that likes the idea of cyclical exploding and crunching universes. How many of them, do you think, would allow us to ride their waves?
