Behind the Science: Darkseid and the Absolute Universe

Behind the Science: Darkseid and the Absolute Universe I wanted to look at Darkseid next, because what he does in DC All In Special is a lot stranger than simply being powerful enough to destroy a planet. We're talking about a universe carrying his influence. That's a completely different question from how hard he can hit something or how much energy he can release. How does a reality end up reflecting the nature of a person? In the special, Darkseid joins with the Spectre and pursues a transformation that reaches the Elseworld. His apparent defeat is part of what happens, rather than a simple end to the threat. The reality that follows is shaped by his influence. I'm keeping this to the version and events in that special, because pulling in every Darkseid story would turn this into a different discussion. The first thing to separate is energy from intention. In physics, energy is a measurable quantity. We can talk about energy being transferred, about radiation interacting with matter, or about conditions changing as the universe expands. But adding energy doesn't give that energy a personality. It doesn't automatically tell a world to become crueler or make life harder for certain people. That's where a word like Omega energy can sound more explanatory than it actually is. It has meaning inside DC's setting. It doesn't give us a laboratory measurement or a set of equations that tells us how Darkseid's will becomes something the universe responds to. Think about how much information is involved. Changing a planet's temperature is already an enormous physical intervention. Arranging a reality so that particular people lose particular advantages is much more specific. Now you're talking about relationships, opportunities, institutions, and events developing in a pattern. More power alone doesn't explain how that pattern gets selected. The Big Bang isn't a ready-made explanation either. The standard cosmological picture describes our observable universe evolving from an early hot, dense state as space expands. It isn't just an explosion going off in an empty room that was already there. There are important open questions about the earliest conditions, but an unanswered question isn't evidence that a conscious being could create a cosmos by dying in the right way. So, if we try to think through Darkseid's influence, there are at least two very different possibilities. He could change the starting conditions and allow the world to develop from there. Or something connected to him could keep affecting the world as it develops. Those aren't the same kind of power. The first would need extraordinary control over how those starting conditions produce later events. The second would need an ongoing connection to the reality being influenced. Neither is something the special explains through real physics. They're ways of identifying what would need explaining, not answers the comic has secretly supplied. And that's the part I find interesting. Destroying a world means changing or ending something that exists. This goes further. The story allows Darkseid's nature to become part of the circumstances in which other lives unfold. Science can help us ask questions about spacetime, information, and the evolution of a universe. It can't currently explain how someone's intentions become a property of reality. That's where this leaves ordinary cosmology and becomes DC's mythology. But the heroes still have choices inside that world. Whatever Darkseid has done to the conditions around them, the story keeps asking what they will do with the lives they actually have. That matters more than treating the Absolute Universe as a place where every individual action has already been decided for them.