The Cosmic Manifesto

Boom!!!

A long time before The Phantom Menace when there were no galaxies, the universe came into existence from a highly compressed primordial state.

Before time was classified as a Planck time (10 ^ -43 seconds), all four fundamental forces?- strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, gravity and electromagnetic force were unified into one force. All matter, energy, space and time are presumed to have exploded outward from the original singularity. After a few Planck seconds, there was a?separation of these four fundamental forces.

As the universe cooled, conditions became right to give rise to the building blocks of matter – the quarks and electrons of which we are all made. A few seconds later, quarks aggregated to produce protons and neutrons. Within minutes, these protons and neutrons combined into nuclei. As the universe continued to expand and cool, things began to happen more slowly. It took 380,000 years for electrons to be trapped in orbits around nuclei, forming the first atoms. These were mainly helium and hydrogen, which are still by far the most abundant elements in the universe. Heavier atoms such as carbon, oxygen, and iron, have since been continuously produced in the hearts of stars and catapulted throughout the universe in spectacular stellar explosions called supernovae.

Fast forward a few billion years; physics and chemistry gave rise to biology. The elements important to life?- carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus – started interacting with other forces to create a primordial soup, from which life emerged. And here we are today on LinkedIn.

The universe is continually learning! It is a massive AI system.

The universe is a system with machine-learning capabilities. Just as we teach modern AI systems to perform unfolding functions and capabilities over time, the laws of the universe are essentially algorithms that do work in the form of learning operations and are continually attaining new states that are not random but are defined by the constraints of the past states.

Having spent some time in understanding this, I decided to document a set of values that guide the working of the universe. Isn’t this what architects do? I have documented four values as a starter, and I am sure that there are many more that I will add with time.

Everything in the universe has a distinct purpose. Stars, for example, are like chemical factories churning out molecules important for life. Every single movement in the universe is geared towards preserving the homeostasis within the system and nothing exists independent of the whole. At the same time, there are destructive forces at play such as black holes, sweeping away stars. The universe succeeds brilliantly at balancing its constructive and destructive forces.

The universe is in a state of constant change. Nothing is static.?Galaxies are being created, while others are being destroyed. Successful entities exhibit patterned strategies of adaptation that wish to optimize for constant change. This is often studied by looking at the flow of energy and entropy in the system. This is non-equilibrium dynamics at play.

The universe follows infinite, or indefinite, self-sustaining cycles. Everything in it is interconnected and interdependent. What is one system’s waste is another’s nutrients — nothing exists independent of the whole. When explosive supernovas happen, stars distribute both stored-up and newly created elements throughout space. All of us carry the remnants of these distant explosions within our bodies.

The universe is one big neural network and is continually learning. It is a causal process, conveyed by physical interactions between systems in the universe. A simple example of this is evolution. The universe has used natural selection as part of the realization of physics and we’re invoking that specific kind of learning. Organisms and systems constantly show learning outcomes, like more success or a higher rate of reproduction. Likewise, some species and sub-optimal systems are laid to rest early and that’s not a bad thing.

Each of these values may be extended to IT systems as well. The intent is to design them for a specific purpose while being flexible, loosely coupled, scalable and can learn continually. This makes them easier to develop, and amenable to change with the introduction of new constraints as well as decommissioning them when required. Such systems can accept failure, learn from it and evolve with elegance to overcome them with time.?

The universe serves as an inspiration for Business and IT teams as it equips them with concepts to guide their processes and uphold best practices in building systems for tomorrow.

For us, A New Hope, there is.

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