Black holes in cosmological natural selection

Lee Smolin, in “Time, laws, and the future of cosmology” (Physics Today, March 2014, page 38 ), proposes cosmological natural selection as an explanation for why the standard model seems fine-tuned to suit a universe that can support life. In his proposal, black holes generate new universes with new fundamental parameters. The universes with parameters most suitable for black hole formation spawn more offspring and are thus preferred. Smolin then notes that the majority of black holes arise as supernova remnants, which would imply that the universe should be fine-tuned to create supernovae.

In his picture, it happens that universes tuned to create supernovae are also conducive to the formation of life. I wonder, though, what if humans are able to create microscopic black holes—for example, in particle accelerators? And what if, eventually, we create them prolifically? Then fine-tuning the universe to create black holes would imply fine-tuning the universe to create the intelligent life that would create the most black holes.

That life-centric variant of cosmological natural selection would also explain why our intelligence seems nicely suited to understanding natural laws and perhaps even playing the central role of an observer in quantum mechanics. One might wonder, “Why is it that the equations we invent in our minds seem to work at describing the universe?” And the answer would be, “Because if the laws of the universe and our brains were not compatible, we would never be able to learn how to create microscopic black holes.”

We may need to build bigger particle colliders. They could be our only reason for existing.