Some people say that the universe is just a biological cell. Do you believe it? Let science reveal the truth

This article is based on answering a question from netizens: Do you believe that the entire universe is just a cell in a certain organism?

Modern science has made the characteristics and properties of living and non-living things very clear. Cells are only the building blocks of living things, and non-living things do not have this characteristic. Modern science also has a general understanding of the birth and evolution of the universe. If you study these basic knowledge carefully, you will not make such a statement.

First understand the basic composition of all substances

From a microscopic perspective, all objects are made up of elementary particles. In our known world, all matter is made up of 118 known elements, which are all the elements found in the universe so far. No other elements have been found outside or inside the earth.

This shows that the universe is universal and the laws of physics and chemistry are widely applicable. More elements may be discovered in the future. Some people are trying to create elements 119 and 120, but it is difficult and there has been no progress for decades. Even if these elements are really discovered and created, they are widely applicable in the universe.

Artificial elements do not mean elements that do not exist in the universe. If an element does not exist in the universe, no matter how hard you try, you cannot create it. So why do artificial elements not exist in nature or are extremely difficult to obtain? This is because these elements are extremely trace or difficult to store. For example, the half-life of artificial element 118 Og is only 12 milliseconds, which is 1.2 hundredths of a second. How can it be obtained in nature?

These elements are composed of different atoms. Atoms are composed of nuclei and electrons. Nuclei are composed of neutrons and protons. Each proton and neutron is composed of three quarks. Can quarks be further divided? Modern physics believes that quarks cannot exist alone because of quark confinement.

There is also a theory that the smallest unit of matter is not a point-like particle, but a line-like string, and all basic particles are formed by strings. This string is extremely small and cannot be observed by humans. It is divided into open strings with endpoints and closed strings in a circle. These strings have different vibration frequencies and movement modes, thus forming different particles.

This theory is called string theory. It is very profound and complex, but it is generally favored by the scientific community, who believe that it is the theory that will unify all particles in nature and achieve the grand unification of the four fundamental forces in the future.

Therefore, from the most microscopic level of matter, all matter in nature is the same, and is composed of the most basic strings or particles. But if we infer from this that the universe is a cell in a certain organism, it is just wishful thinking.

Scientific things must have scientific laws/

Anyone can have any random thoughts, it is everyone's own business and personal freedom. But if you must share such random thoughts as science, it is nonsense. Because anything called science must be done according to scientific laws, that is, the conclusions obtained by people with a scientific spirit through scientific methods are scientific conclusions.

What is the scientific spirit? It means respecting the scientific tradition formed over thousands of years, especially in the last few hundred years. It is mainly to act in accordance with scientific cognition, behavioral norms, and value orientations. It is mainly manifested in that scientific cognition comes from practice and respects the various theories and cognitions that have been obtained from previous scientific practice, just like the theoretical knowledge we have learned from primary school to university.

The scientific method is to follow the recognized methods formed by modern science, such as mathematics, chemistry, physics, observation, discovery, qualitative and quantitative analysis. The conclusions obtained by using these methods can be verified and reproduced by anyone in the world using the same method or other scientifically recognized methods, and can be certified by authoritative organizations with public credibility, so that they can become scientific achievements.

Even if the results have been certified by the authority, if someone can disprove them, that is, find that there is something wrong with its conclusion or proof method, they can be questioned and denied. This is the embodiment of the scientific spirit and scientific method, and the source of all scientific conjectures or theories.

Therefore, violating the scientific spirit and scientific method, and attempting to overturn a scientific discovery or theory by imagining something at random, and establishing a shocking theory, is just a kind of delusion. In the history of science, such people are called delusionists and folk scientists. Let's learn some common sense about cells and the universe to make a distinction.

Discovery and theoretical development of cells/

The English name of cells is Cells. They were first discovered by British scientist Robert Hooke in 1665. It has been 357 years since then. During these hundreds of years, generations of scientists have conducted increasingly in-depth research on cells and have gained a thorough understanding of the internal structure and mechanism of cells. On this basis, they have developed genetics and unlocked the code of biological genetics.

Cells are the basic and functional units that make up organisms, and can be divided into two major categories: prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells. It is known that except for viruses, all organisms, including microorganisms, plants, animals, and insects are composed of cells, and viruses also need to be active in host cells.

Most cells are tiny, but their sizes are very wide. Small ones can only be seen under a microscope, and large ones can be seen even with squinting eyes. Plant cells are usually larger in size, ranging from 10 to 100 microns; animal cells are smaller, generally between 20 and 30 microns. The smallest cells in nature are considered to be mycoplasmas, which are between 0.1 and 0.3 microns, as small as viruses; and the largest cells are egg cells. Chicken eggs, duck eggs, and bird eggs are all egg cells, and one egg is one cell. The largest egg cell is an ostrich egg, which is usually 15 cm long and 13 cm wide (diameter).

There are many types of human cells, and the cells of various organs are different, such as liver cells, myocardial cells, kidney cells, etc.; the cell morphology is also diverse, such as flat cells, columnar cells, astrocytes, etc. The total number of various cells in the human body is about 40 to 60 trillion, of which the smallest cell is the platelet, which is only 2 microns; the largest cell is the brain nerve cell, which can reach a diameter of 100 microns, and the folded nerve axon can be stretched to 1 meter.

The different cells between men and women are reproductive cells. Mature men produce sperm, and mature women produce egg cells.

Sperm is a bit like a frog tadpole, with a regular oval head, 3.5 to 5 microns long, 2 to 3 microns wide, 5 to 7 microns long, 1 micron wide, and a tail of about 45 microns. The testicles of men are the organs that produce sperm, producing sperm every second, and can produce about 1 billion sperm every day. Based on a 50-year peak period of sperm production, a lifetime can produce 18 trillion sperm.

However, not all of these sperms will be successful, because if they are not excreted from the body they will die of old age, so a certain number of them are kept in reserve. And the chance of sperm excreted from the body meeting the egg is too small, and 99.9999999999999999% of them are cannon fodder.

The egg cell is spherical, and the diameter of a mature egg cell is 200-500 microns. A woman has about 3-11 follicles developing each month, but generally only one dominant one will fully mature and be released, while the rest are just cannon fodder, and will degenerate by themselves through apoptosis. A woman will have 400-500 egg cells that mature and ovulate in her lifetime.

Cells are mainly composed of nuclei and cytoplasm, with a cell membrane on the surface. Plant cells have cell walls outside the cell membrane, chlorophyll and vacuoles in the cytoplasm, and mitochondria; animal cells have no cell walls, but have centrosomes in the cells. Cells have complex movement, nutrition, and reproduction functions.

The DNA molecule chain in the cell nucleus, also called deoxyribonucleic acid, carries the genetic information necessary for synthesizing RNA and proteins. It is a long polymer composed of four repeated base pairs. The chain is about 2.4 nanometers wide and each base pair is about 0.33 nanometers long. Since the human body has 3 billion to 6 billion base pairs, these base pairs can be stretched to about two meters.

Even so, these molecular chains are huddled together in the cell, occupying only a very small space in the cell. Having said so much, I have only roughly described the basic structure of the cell. Its complex movement mechanism is a long story, so I will not elaborate on it here.

So what is the movement and evolution of celestial bodies in the universe like?

Some people always think of the planetary model of atomic motion, and then look at the orbital motion of the planets in the solar system, and equate the two, thus giving rise to the conjecture that an atom is a solar system and a cell is a universe. In fact, this is completely unreliable.

Modern physics and quantum mechanics believe that the electrons outside the nucleus of an atom do not move like planets around the sun, but appear randomly anywhere around the nucleus in the form of wave functions, with the uncertainty principle of position and momentum. Therefore, the modern atomic model is the electron cloud model, that is, electrons appear randomly around the nucleus like clouds.

The standard model of modern cosmology believes that the universe originated from an accidental explosion 13.8 billion years ago. Many people think that this is the random imagination of scientists, but in fact, this theory is based on a large number of observational discoveries and experimental research evidence. The two cornerstones of modern physics, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, are in harmony with this theory. So far, no theory has been able to challenge this theory of the origin of the universe.

Today we will not discuss the right or wrong of the standard model of the universe, nor are we qualified to discuss such profound topics. We will just simply talk about how the universe moves.

In the early days of the theory, the large-scale movement of the universe was considered to be completely dominated by visible matter under the control of gravity. What is visible matter? It refers to various observable celestial bodies such as stars, galaxies, and nebulae. The movement of these celestial bodies strictly follows Newton's law of universal gravitation. Later, it developed into Einstein's field theory, which revised Newton's classical mechanics theory and described the movement of celestial bodies more accurately.

However, many scientists have found that the general law of gravity cannot explain the movement of some galaxy clusters, nor the fact that the universe is expanding faster and faster. So they introduced two invisible and intangible things, dark matter and dark energy. Only by filling in these two hypothetical substances can the theory be self-consistent and perfect.

Dark matter is considered to be invisible but has mass because it does not interact with photons. Dark energy also does not interact with photons and is invisible. Mass is the source of space-time curvature, which is gravity. Its tendency is to bring matter together. Therefore, the cohesive force that maintains galaxies, galaxy clusters, and even the large-scale structure of the universe relies on dark matter. The nature of dark energy is to produce repulsion, and its tendency is to separate matter, which is manifested by the expansion of the universe.

After many years of observation and measurement, the scientific community believes that visible matter in the universe only accounts for 4.9% of the total mass and energy, while dark matter accounts for 26.8% and dark energy accounts for 68.3%. Therefore, the movement of the universe is mainly a game between dark matter and dark energy. At present, dark energy still has the upper hand, so the universe is expanding continuously and faster and faster.

Therefore, the entire history of cosmic evolution is the history of the game between these two forces. The latest research shows that since the beginning of the Big Bang, the contrast between dark matter and dark energy has been changing. Dark matter has been decreasing, while dark energy has been increasing. Dark energy has been consuming dark matter, or dark matter has been continuously converted into dark energy.

If this research is eventually confirmed, the universe will continue to be hit by dimensionality reduction, and the visible matter in the universe will become increasingly sparse in the future, and will eventually die in the cold and nothingness in infinite dilution; if the universe cannot withstand the increasingly rapid expansion, it may be torn apart before the arrival of cold nothingness, and all galaxies, stars, planets, atoms, and particles will be torn apart, time and space will disappear, and they will also perish in nothingness.

Of course, don't be afraid of seeing this terrible consequence, because long before the universe is destroyed, humans and all biological cells have already been extinct. After understanding the laws of motion of the universe and biological cells, do you still think that the universe is a cell in a certain organism? Welcome to discuss, thank you for reading.

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