The Heartbeat of the Universe: Why Everything is Part of One Whole

Uncover the shared rhythms that link microbes, ecosystems, and galaxies.

It’s impossible to ignore it any longer.

What goes on underground, under our feet is interconnected through mycelial networks, a similar pattern in the sea with nano-bridges of cyanobacteria, and astrophysicists have photographed the galaxies all interconnected! Wow!

It seems the default structure of the universe, in all it’s expressions, is Interconnected. With all aspects being interconnected, (Land, Sea and Galaxies) it makes total sense that, because of it’s structure and behaviour - it’s One system.

Sharing

What is also very striking is that in each Interconnected system on land and sea, there is sharing of nutrients and enzymes through the network even with other species. So not simply interconnection but collaboration and sharing.

Underground

The mycelial networks acts as a “continuous pipe system” that branches, fuses and flows with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.

Plants can receive chemical signals through the networks, which helps them share resources, learn from neighbours about pests and get warnings about competitors.

In the Sea

Cyanobacteria are connected by nano-bridges and these bacterial nanotubes are structures made of cell membrane that allow nutrients and resources to flow between two or more cells.

Moving across these bridges from cell to cell were substances such as amino acids, the basic building blocks of proteins, as well as enzymes and toxins. Bacteria, biologists now think, have probably been making these structures all along. Scientists simply hadn’t noticed them or realized their significance.

And on sharing in the ocean Conrad Mullineaux, a microbiologist at Queen Mary University of London said:

“This [new] paper shows that this transfer is both happening within and between species. This is super interesting. This kind of cooperation is probably more common than people realize.”

And would you believe the microbes underground and in the ocean are responsible for the weather!

Controlling the Weather

Underground

Microbes underground capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. By producing proteins that slice and recombine carbon dioxide molecules, these microbes work in tandem with the grasses to capture atmospheric carbon dioxide and turn it into solid, carbon-rich biological matter that gets stored underground.

In the Sea

Prochlorococcus bacteria create a significant portion — 10% to 20% — of the atmosphere’s oxygen. That means that life on Earth depends on the roughly 3 octillion (or 3 × 10) tiny individual cells toiling away (in the ocean).

And now to Galaxies

The standard cosmological model of structure formation in the universe predicts that galaxies are embedded in a cosmic web of matter, most of which (about 84 percent) is invisible dark matter.

Up until 2014, the filaments had never been seen. Then researchers detected the fluorescent glow of hydrogen gas resulting from its illumination by intense radiation from a quasar.

"This quasar is illuminating diffuse gas on scales well beyond any we've seen before, giving us the first picture of extended gas between galaxies. It provides a terrific insight into the overall structure of our universe," said coauthor J. Xavier Prochaska, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz.

Photo Credit: S. Cantalupo - The intense radiation from a quasar can, like a flashlight, illuminate part of the surrounding cosmic web (highlighted in the image) and make a filament of gas glow,

With 50% of the Earth’s matter coming from the intergalactic winds, we cannot rule out the sharing ability of in the interconnected web of everything.

Summary

Land, Sea and Galaxies all showing interconnection as their default structure. Taken all 3 together, what if we realise that it’s One system. Like our own bodies, where what seems like individual systems such as heart, liver, lungs, all are interconnected into the one system of our body. What if it’s the same with the cosmos, what looks like an individual system is now being seen as interconnected. The microbes underground and in the ocean are also not simply connected to each other, they are connected on a larger scale to the weather systems.

Very Recent

And we’ve discovered this ‘interconnection’ very recently, all in the last 25 years. Early 2000’s for mycelial networks, 2014 for the interconnected galaxies photograph and 2024 for the cyanobacteria nano-bridges in the sea.

It seems like the universe is now letting us get a glimpse of the interconnected, collaborative, sharing way that it actually uses everywhere, maybe we just weren’t ready to see it.

And . . . we are a fundamental part of it!

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Content Links:

1. Mycelial networks Underground

   https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-soil-microbes-affect-the-environment-20150616/

2. Cyanobacteria nano-bridges in the Sea

   https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-ocean-teems-with-networks-of-interconnected-bacteria-20250106/

3. Galaxies interconnected through hydrogen filaments

   https://news.ucsc.edu/2014/01/cosmic-web.html

For more on an Interconnected Universe and our place in it, read Vincent’s book: Custodians - The Solution to an Earth in Crisis