In February 2025, a remarkable study was published in the renowned journal Nature Astronomy (Glavin et al. 2025).1 During its seven-year mission, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected cosmic rock samples from Bennu, a 500-meter-wide asteroid in near-Earth orbit. The samples were returned to Earth in a sealed capsule to prevent any terrestrial contamination.
In addition to numerous amino acids and other organic compounds, the rock samples from Bennu also contained all the nucleic bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil) that are the basic building blocks of DNA and RNA common to all life forms on Earth.
Previous analyses of cosmic rock had revealed microscopic organic structures, about which Giessen paleobiochemist Hans Pflug wrote: “One thing is certain: if the structures discovered in the meteorites had been found in terrestrial sediments, hardly anyone would have hesitated to interpret them as the remains of organisms.” The sample in question came from the Murchison comet, which is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old, making it older than the Earth.
The crucial question now is: are the organic compounds and structures in the cosmos the primordial building blocks from which life later emerged on Earth, or are they a kind of fossilized residue from a former universal, cosmic life, as described by Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science? The latter is supported by recent publications in cosmology, which report on biochemical and morphological structures that exhibit a striking organic signature and show an astonishing similarity to neural networks.
For years, space telescopes such as Hubble have been sending huge amounts of data from the depths of space back to Earth, which is used to create digital simulations of the spatial arrangement of galaxies in the cosmos. The bright spots in the image correspond to galaxies or galaxy clusters on a scale of millions of light years. Network-like structures can be seen along with denser, galaxy-rich clusters where compressive gravitational forces are at work. Between them are voids that have been explained by opposing forces, known as gravitational instabilities. In astrophysics, the term “dark matter” is used to describe forces and phenomena that do not correspond to the physical laws of gravity but instead to levitation or antigravity, such as these voids. In astrophysics, “dark energy” is used to describe another force that is also mysterious and acts throughout the cosmos in accelerating the expansion of the entire universe. “Matter” in the classical sense tends to move centrifugally apart, so to speak—a principle we know on Earth from plant growth. Such “living” structures only arise through the interaction of gravity and antigravity: all living things pulsate in the field of polar forces.
The overall picture of the universe therefore does not correspond to a random explosion of masses as a result of a hypothetical Big Bang but shows a very specific structure that is strongly reminiscent of organic matter.
The apparent similarity between cosmic and neural networks was so striking that astrophysicists from the University of Bologna, in collaboration with neuroscientists, decided to investigate further. Their findings were published in the renowned scientific journal Frontiers in Physics (Vazza & Feletti 2020),2 which states: “The tantalizing degree of similarity that our analysis exposes seems to suggest that the self-organization of both complex systems is likely being shaped by similar principles of network dynamics, despite the radically different scales and processes at play.”
With the help of modern mathematical methods (graph theory), it is now possible to perform analyses that calculate the similarity of network-like structures in nature and technology (e.g., root systems, road networks, family relationships, and much more). The authors of the study emphasize that the degree of similarity is beyond chance: “[O]ur findings hint at the fact that similar network configurations can emerge from the interaction of entirely different physical processes, resulting in similar levels of complexity and self-organization.”
Therefore, there seem to be natural laws that have a structuring effect both in the cosmos and in our brain. According to Rudolf Steiner, “[the] brain has something to do with the cosmic conditions of the whole starry sky . . . . The human being who steps out of themselves through higher development . . . sees in the activity of the blood circulation, through the activity of the heart, a mirror image of the mysterious forces of the solar system, and in the processes of the brain, which they then observe spiritually from outside, they learn about the cosmos and its mysteries. . . . In a certain sense, even the structure of the brain is a kind of mirror image of the position of the celestial bodies present at human birth for the point on earth at which the human being is born.”3
The relationship between the brain and the cosmos touches us deeply. We can view the entire process of evolution from the perspective of head formation: how the skull gradually rises toward the vault of heaven in the course of higher development until the “weightless” brain, with its unconditional functional plasticity, becomes the resonating organ of the entire cosmos. We are usually not conscious of the potential universality of thought formation, which is inherent in the organization of our head like a mirror of the world and enables us to experience and conceptualize all macrocosmic phenomena.
What influence would such connections have on young people’s thinking if they were able to learn about these scientifically proven discoveries in school?
A detailed presentation of the topic with references will be published in the journal Elemente der Naturwissenschaft [Elements of natural science] 123 (2025), forthcoming.
Other Literature
Hans D. Pflug, Die Spur des Lebens: Paläontologie—chemisch betrachtet [The trace of life: Paleontology—from a chemical perspective] (Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 1984), 139.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Comparison between human brain cells (left) and galaxies in the universe (right.)4
Footnotes
- Daniel P. Glavin et al., “Abundant Ammonia and Nitrogen-Rich Soluble Organic Matter in Samples from Asteroid (101955) Bennu,” Nature Astronomy 9 (2025): 199–210.
- Franco Vazza and Alberto Feletti, “The Quantitative Comparison Between the Neuronal Network and the Cosmic Web,” Frontiers in Physics 8 (2020): 525731.
- Rudolf Steiner, The Effects of Esoteric Development, CW 145 (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1997), lecture in The Hague on March 21, 1913.
- From: Michele Starr, “Study Maps The Odd Structural Similarities Between The Human Brain And The Universe,” scienceAlert, November 2020. See also: Anna Bazan-Krzywoszańska, Robert Lach, and Maria Mrówczyńska, “City as a System Supported by Artificial Intelligence,” Urban and Regional Planning 5, no. 2 (2020): 32–39.
