Avi Loeb writes in Scientific American that when we humans are sufficiently advanced, we will create other universes as well:
At Scientific American, Avi Loeb, the longest-serving chair of astronomy at Harvard (2011–2020), tackles the question of what came before the Big Bang. He surveys the conventional explanations for this singularity in time and space (when all points are zero) and comes to a somewhat surprising conclusion: Creation by an alien intelligence is the best way to account for our universe:
News, “Harvard astronomer: Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang” at Mind Matters News
Now there are a variety of conjectures in the scientific literature for our cosmic origins, including the ideas that our universe emerged from a vacuum fluctuation, or that it is cyclic with repeated periods of contraction and expansion, or that it was selected by the anthropic principle out of the string theory landscape of the multiverse—where, as the MIT cosmologist Alan Guth says “everything that can happen will happen … an infinite number of times,” or that it emerged out of the collapse of matter in the interior of a black hole.
AVI LOEB, “WAS OUR UNIVERSE CREATED IN A LABORATORY?” AT SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (OCTOBER 15, 2021)
Whether or not we warm to his proposal, the main thing to see is that alternative — supposedly more scientific — proposals also include either philosophical assumptions or causes we cannot account for:
“our universe emerged from a vacuum fluctuation” (What caused the vacuum or the fluctuation?)
“it is cyclic with repeated periods of contraction and expansion” (in the absence of a history, how would we know that?)
“it was selected by the anthropic principle out of the string theory landscape of the multiverse” (we have no evidence for a string theory landscape or a multiverse)
or
“it emerged out of the collapse of matter in the interior of a black hole” (but how did the black hole originate?)
In short, all these claims just shove the problem of the ability to create a universe out of site or off the scene.
Loeb favors the view that the ability to create a universe includes the concentrated use of information that we associate with intelligence (which we know can create things): More:
Just about any hypothesis other than theism is okay with Scientific American. Good to know.
Takehome: Avi Loeb’s hypothesis is not logically stranger than the many hypotheses that attempt to account for the Big Bang without underlying information/intelligence.
You may also wish to read:
The UFOs Carl Sagan was convinced of but couldn’t talk about. Sagan had already been denied tenure at Harvard, a sci-fi screenwriter reflects, and he couldn’t afford to take more chances. Writer Bryce Zabel recalls a dispute with Sagan on the topic in a parking lot 40 years ago, during the Voyager 2 flyby — which changed Zabel’s career.
and
The Pentagon’s UAP (UFO) report signals a sharp attitude change. The brass have committed themselves to going “wherever the data takes us.” No, they didn’t report UFOs. But they reported enough mysteries to stop merely debunking and discrediting… and follow the evidence.