[lkmill]

If this is true it almost literally means black holes are a way for universes to make children. If we apply Darwin’s principles of the strongest survive this must mean that universes that produce the most black holes are the “best”. If correct, what does this actually mean?

[pantalaimon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_natural_selection

https://theeggandtherock.com/p/the-blowtorch-theory-a-new-mo...

[henry2023]

Darwinian logic requires a feedback loop. And because those universes are isolated then there’s no “incentive” of a universe to have more “offspring”?

[jbjbjbjb]

There is a theory of cosmological evolution. The child universes have slightly different physical constants and universes that produce more black holes will leave behind more offspring universes so over many generations, the universes evolve toward parameters that favour black hole production.

[pantalaimon]

That's what Blowtorch theory predicts, it notes three stages of black hole formation:

- direct collapse after the big bang. Those supermassive black holes now from the center of galaxies and are the earliest and simplest form of how universes reproduced

- stellar collapse, requires the formation of stars, but those can be much more plentyfull than previous supermassive direct collapse black holes, so many more universes will have those

- black holes created by technology. Since black holes are incredibly efficient at converting mass to energy, in a universe that has the capability to form intelligent life, this life will eventually find a way to harness black holes as an energy source. In doing so they would create even more tiny black holes (maybe to power spaceships?), so such universes would form the most offspring.

[ben_w]

It requires imperfect reproduction where the imperfections alter the probability of further reproduction.

If each black hole in our universe contained a pocket universe with very slightly different laws of physics (to each other and to us), but the same amount of mass-energy on the inside as our universe had when it started, then (1) those pocket universes able to create stars and black holes would also go on to create black holes with pocket universes, but also (2) those pocket universes not able to create black holes, would not create more pocket universes.

I have never seen a reason to think that this could happen, nor why such pocket universes might have more mass on the inside than they appear to have on the outside, but that's the argument.