All in the mind

In a monastery in India, a saffron-robed monk and a suited neuroscientist debate the nature of the universe. The scientist is consciousness expert Christof Koch. The monk is the Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism. At the end of a long day of big ideas, the men of science and religion discover they agree on almost everything.

Science keeps uncovering strange things out in space. The latest oddity is a ring of 65 moon-like structures orbiting a dying star. "This is the first time that anything has been seen in the habitable zoneAlso known as the Goldilocks zone. The range of orbits where the temperature is "just right" for liquid water. of a white dwarfMost stars in the Milky Way, including our own, will eventually burn themselves out and become these tiny dead stars, the size of Earth.", says Astrophysicist Jay Farihi.

These "stellar corpses" are unusual places to look for life. But Farihi's team noticed the moons have "highly regular" orbits, something that doesn't happen accidentally. Farihi thinks an Earth-like planet's gravity is pulling the moons into formation.

But he admits these weird structures could also be evidence of "planetary engineering". So have we stumbled upon intelligent life, 117 light-years from Earth?

That might depend on what we mean by intelligence. Is consciousness the result of our uniquely powerful brains, or could it be a fundamental part of the universe itself?

To conventional science, this sounds like superstition. "Consciousness is not a mystery," says philosopher Galen Strawson. "It is matter." The activity that goes on inside animal brains.

Neuroscientist Michael Graziano says it evolved around 300 million years ago in mammals, reptiles and birds. A level of awareness that gives us a survival advantage over other creatures. Humans have such rich inner lives we can't help but think everything around us is also conscious: "storms, rivers, empty spaces, ghosts and gods."

Christof Koch calls this a "Great Silliness". Talking to the Dalai Lama, he argued that we can't draw a hard line between thinking and unthinking life.

He argues: "Consciousness is experience." BeesThese social insects can recognise faces, communicate with each other via waggle dances and navigate complex mazes with their short-term memory., bacteria and even atoms all have a "tiny glow of experience": they sense and react to the world around them. Koch uses a scientific approach called Integrated Information TheoryConsciousness is measured by Φ or phi. The more complex and integrated something is, the more consciousness it has. to argue consciousness is everywhere.

It's an idea familiar to Buddhists, who believe the mind transcends the body. But it shouldn't be confused with Intelligent DesignSupporters believe that the universe and life are too complex to be the result of natural processes. - a pseudoscience that tries to disprove the theory of evolution. According to Koch, the universe may be conscious, but it is not a divine being.

The James Webb TelescopeLaunched late last year, the NASA telescope will observe the oldest and most distant formations in the universe., the world's most advanced eye on the universe, has begun to align its 18 gold-plated panels to take photos of deep space.

Jay Farihi hopes it will help us understand these strange structures and discover more of them. "In astronomy, if we find one, it usually means that it's common." But although telescopes are important, we may also need neuroscientists and a theory of consciousness, to know what we're looking for.

Is the universe conscious?

Yes: One thing we know for sure about matter is that some of it - us - has experiences. Unless we argue humans are unique in the universe, we must assume consciousness is intrinsic to matter.

No: This is animismThe religious belief that objects, places and creatures contain a soul or spiritual essence., not science. Consciousness evolved in complex animals. Expanding our definition to include non-living things does not help us understand them or consciousness better.

Or... Perhaps consciousness is not everywhere but nowhere. Some scientists argue it is just a side-effect of the unconscious workings of the mind. It is not fundamental to us or the working of the universe.