Would aliens do physics or is science a human invention?

The following is an excerpt from ours Lost in space-time bulletin. Each month we delve into fascinating ideas from around the universe. You can login Lost in space-time here.

Modern physics offers a remarkable view of reality. Over the course of more than a century, he decoded the architecture of atoms, traced the early history of the universe, and established laws that appear to apply everywhere from the Earth’s crust to distant galaxies. It is tempting to believe that these theories are not only accurate but inevitable—that any sufficiently intelligent civilization will eventually discover the same truths.

I used to believe that too. But lately I’ve started to wonder if physics is less a window into universal reality and more a mirror reflecting the particular kind of minds we happen to have.

This troubling idea emerges when you ask a deceptively simple question: would alien scientists, shaped by a different biology or culture, arrive at the same physics we have? Or could they develop something that works just as well but looks completely alien – built on concepts and assumptions we would hardly recognize?

This question is at the heart of my book, Do aliens speak physics?which imagines a variety of First Contact scenarios, each designed to explore a basic premise of modern physics. In developing it—often in conversation with philosophers of science—I realized something surprising: many pillars of physics that seem hard-wired may actually be contingent. But knowing that doesn’t weaken the science. It can be how we improve it.

I’ve been into physics all my life. When I’m not taught at the University of California, IrvineI work at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, analyzing data from the Large Hadron Collider. But a few years ago, conversations with philosophers forced me to return to a question I hadn’t seriously considered since my student days: what exactly is physics?

At its core, physics tries to explain how the universe works—not just what we observe, but what lies behind those observations. It looks for patterns, builds models that reveal hidden structures, and ideally distills everything into a small set of rules from which the rest follows. In this regard, it was extremely successful.

Yet physics never fully describes the universe. Describes carefully selected versions.

Consider predictions of a comet’s path. In principle, we could explain every gravitational pull, the slow loss of material through sublimation of ice, even the way an irregular shape causes a comet to fall. In practice, we have to decide what to include and what to ignore. There is no single correct model—only models that are good enough for the question at hand.

This is true throughout physics. Even our most precise theories rely on approximations and assumptions that make mathematics manageable. And it is not clear that the theories we think of as fundamental really are. They can simply be powerful descriptions that work on human scales. There is no guarantee that by exploring nature more and more finely we will eventually hit the bedrock.

If physics depends on choices—on simplification, representation, and emphasis—then alien physicists could reasonably make different ones.

What if aliens don’t experience time like we do?

Imagine that aliens come to Earth. They mastered interstellar travel and landed near Paris. We send linguists and scientists to greet them, hoping for a technological windfall. The delegation returns empty-handed.

“They can’t share their technology,” explains the lead physicist. “Because of what happens 74 years from now.

The implication is troubling. These aliens experience time not as a flowing sequence, but as a complete structure, something that is navigable rather than enduring. Human physics, on the other hand, is built on the idea that the present creates the future. Causes precede effects. The universe counts forward, moment by moment.

But what if this image is more of a human convenience than a cosmic necessity?

We know that any functional physics must obey certain constraints. A universe that allows for unlimited messages from the future quickly collapses into a paradox. But within these limits, the structure of time can be more flexible than we usually admit.

There are already hints of this in our own theories. Quantum entanglement binds distant particles together so that a measurement of one appears to instantly fix the state of the other, despite the fact that no information can be exchanged between them. This in itself strains our intuition. But things get weirder when the theory of relativity comes into play. Observers moving at different speeds do not agree on the order of events. In some frames of reference, one measurement appears to affect the other before it occurs.

The standard response is to insist that nothing physically problematic has happened: no faster-than-light signals, no causal contradictions. But this assurance rests on a firm adherence to the classical notion of causality, which quantum mechanics has never fully respected.

Some physicists have taken a more radical approach. In so-called retrocausal interpretations of quantum mechanics, future events are allowed to help shape the present. Measurements don’t just reveal results; they help define them, even in retrospect. The universe no longer calculates itself strictly step by step.

If aliens had a radically different construction of time, they might accept such ideas naturally rather than seeing them as troubling exceptions. And we may eventually have to do the same.

What if aliens don’t insist on a single theory of nature?

Now imagine that aliens invite us aboard their ship for a scientific conference. Earth sends forth its brightest minds. Here are our best theories. The aliens listen politely and then respond.

One group describes a framework that reproduces all known experiments using unknown concepts. The second represents a different, incompatible approach. Then the third. Each one works. Each is internally consistent. None can be reduced to the others.

Finally, someone asks the obvious question: which one is true?

The aliens look confused. Everyone, they say. Why choose?

Human science assumes that competing theories must eventually battle it out, with only one surviving as the correct description of reality. When multiple explanations fit the data, we design experiments to eliminate all but one winner.

This strategy is effective and often effective. But it’s a preference, not a logical necessity. Science today often tolerates pluralism more than it admits. Weather forecasting is a striking example. Modern meteorology relies on sets of models, each tuned to different assumptions and scales. These models commonly disagree, and experts decide which to trust depending on the context. No model is considered unequivocally correct.

Another example comes from classical mechanics. In school we learn Newton’s laws as a story about the forces that push and pull objects through space. But the same motions can be derived in a very different way, by observing how energy flows through the system, or by assuming that nature somehow “chooses” a path that minimizes the quantity called “action.” For most physicists, these are just alternative ways to achieve the same sums.

Philosophers of science, however, would point out that each framework elevates a different concept—force, energy, optimization—to center stage and offers a different account of what drives motion underneath. The fact that these pictures cannot be separated by experiment shows that empirical success alone may not be sufficient to tell us which case, if any, deserves to be called “true”.

This suggests an alternative vision of science—not a march toward a single ultimate theory, but a set of frameworks, each useful in different situations. Aliens could adopt such an approach from the outset without ever feeling the need to crown a single account as the truth.

What if aliens never felt the need to do physics at all?

Finally, imagine aliens arriving by opening a wormhole. The technology is amazing. Surely he must have a deep insight into gravity, perhaps even quantum gravity.

But what if not?

What if their space-bending technology is the result of millions of years of trial and error rather than theoretical understanding? They know how to build it and how to use it, but they don’t know why it works—and they couldn’t care less.

This sounds unlikely only because we are used to thinking of technology as an outgrowth of science. Historically, the relationship has often run in the opposite direction. People were making steel, glass and antibiotics long before they understood basic chemistry or biology. Cathedrals were built before calculus.

The close connection between science and technology that we take for granted is a recent and culturally specific achievement.

It is tempting to assume that any intelligent species would be compelled to ask “why.” But this compulsion may reflect human psychology rather than a universal trait of intelligence. Other species may value reliability over explanation or usefulness over understanding. They were able to build extraordinary technologies without ever developing anything recognizable as physics—not because they couldn’t take the next step, but because that step never seemed necessary.

These scenarios are speculative. But they point out something that is easy to forget. Physics is the cumulative result of many human choices: about what counts as an explanation, which inconsistencies matter, and which questions are worth asking at all. It reflects our history, our tools, and our values, just as it reflects the fabric of the universe.

Acknowledging that this does not diminish physics. It does the opposite. The more aware we are of the assumptions implicit in our theories and methods—about time, causality, truth, and explanation—the more freedom we gain to reevaluate them.

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