This means if the universe is thinking, it isn’t thinking very much. And the capacity of the universe to connect with itself decreases with its expansion, so it’ll go downhill from hereon. If we leave the long-range connections entirely aside, that’s about as much as our brain does in 3 minutes. This means that, optimistically, the universe might have managed about 1000 exchanges between its nearest neurons since the Big Bang. And sending a single signal to our nearest neuron, the galaxy cluster M81, would take about 11 million years at least. This means if one side of the hypothetical universe-brain wanted to at least take note of its other side, that would take 90 billion years even at the speed of light. The universe, in contrast, is presently some 90 billion light years in diameter, and – as Albert Einstein taught us – nothing travels faster than the speed of light. But the brain is small and it takes only fractions of seconds for signals to zip around in it. The signals in our brain travel at about 100 meters per second, a million times slower than the speed of light. Most of these signals (80%) are short-distance, going only about 1 millimeter, but about 20% are long-distance, connecting different parts of the brain. Neurons in the human brain send about 5-50 signals per second. Another important difference is that it takes a long time for signals to cross the universe.
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