Despite everything that scientists now know, much of our universe is still a mystery.
And according to an astrophysicist at Columbia University, this may be because the physical laws of the cosmos are not what they seem.
The expert says that our universe can be powered by the reconstructed intelligence of an alien civilization - so advanced that it transformed itself into quantum reality, "disappearing from ordinary physics."
While these claims may sound radical, an intelligence indistinguishable from the very fabric of the universe could solve many of the greatest mysteries of existence, said Caleb Scharf, director of astrobiology at Columbia University.
On the one hand, this could explain why we still have not found an intelligent civilization outside the Earth.
“Perhaps the overdeveloped life is not somewhere outside,” says Scharf.
“Perhaps she is already around us. It's built into what we think of physics itself. In other words, life may not be contained in equations, it may be equations themselves."
Scarf points to the theory of the singularity - a certain period in the foreseeable future when humanity will merge with technology.
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If machines become intelligent enough, they will be able to decipher the overwhelming complexity of the world around them, which will allow humanity to recreate itself in new forms.
One such form could be the mysterious dark matter, which makes up 27 percent of the universe.
According to Scharf, dark matter can be a complex entity that serves as the final link of an intelligent race, allowing this race to avoid all dangers.
Or there is simply another extraterrestrial intelligent life hiding there.
Dark matter cannot be observed directly, it is invisible because it does not reflect light, but astronomers know about it because of the gravitational effects that it has on the matter available for our observation.
“If you are a civilization that has figured out how to recode living systems into other entities, all you have to do is create a data-transferring 'ordinary matter-dark matter' system, a kind of 3D dark matter printer,” explains Scharf.
And then, he continues, this living given will be able to influence the behavior of ordinary cosmic matter.
Life has a built-in desire to avoid annihilation, so an advanced lifeform may want to create a "backup" of itself to ensure its survival by spreading throughout quantum reality by storing data in media distributed throughout the universe, such as photons.
In the end, says Scharf, it is entirely possible that "we do not see intelligent life because it is an integral and unaware part of what we consider to be the natural world."
