Not to a single protein, there isn’t. We can see the overall structure and function in a cell because we can examine it from the outside. From within, on the scale of cellular machinery, the functions may not seem to be part of a larger scheme; just a repetitious action of basic mechanisms.
We don’t know that the universe has no boundary. We just know that we can’t see past the cosmic event horizon, and that from WMAP data that the cosmos doesn’t appear to wrap around upon itself within the scale of the observable universe. We really can’t infer anything beyond the extent of the observable universe.
First of all, just being a protein is a pretty unlikely event in the universe at large. Except in very specific anti-entropic environments (like cells, and maybe 2D crystal boundaries on warm ocean fissures, or whatever), things that complex just don’t exist.
Second, I’m not sure exactly how to make this precise, but looking at a protein in the context of a cell’s machinery, you can generally tell (and you could tell even from the protein’s point of view) what it’s “for” and what it “does” in a way that isn’t true for most molecules in the universe. Biological proteins are frequently either running into reactions that they can catalyze, or participating in reactions that are catalyzed by some other molecule, and usually this is happening within an optimal temperature range, and so on.
The boundary of a cell is a selectively-permeable membrane that interacts in well-defined ways with the various things that float around inside cells. Even if our universe is closed, it doesn’t have anything analogous to that.
OK, I suppose it’s conceivable that there’s actually a double-layered wall of cosmic strings with embedded black holes, or something like that, which selectively let different types of objects in and out of the universe while blocking others, and it’s far enough outside the visible universe that we have no way of detecting its presence. In the same way that it’s conceivable that the universe was created 6000 years ago by someone who deliberately left overwhelmingly misleading clues for scientists to see if he could get them to disbelieve their creation so he could justify punishing them for eternity.
What the OP is asking is precisely analogous to the question “Is there a God?”, and the question is precisely as answerable to the same level of certainty. In other words, it’s a meaningless question only amenable to pure speculation, and nothing else.
It’s my understanding (somebody correct me if I’m wrong), that objects at opposite sides of our visible universe are expanding faster than light can catch up. That means even when those quasars were a millimeter apart the light didn’t have time to travel between them, and the intervening time has only made the situation worse.
I understand that at small time frames, even our own cellular machinery is out of causal link with each other, but the key is that causality catches up. I don’t think this is necessarily the case with the universe as a whole. As time goes on, our light cone will contain less and less of the universe within it, not more and more.
In other words, how do you have a working cell that continues to expand forever, to the point of its constituent parts becoming causally disconnected? For that matter, how do you have anything remotely recognizable as “living” under those kinds of conditions?
A cell in my body can “see” (so to speak) cells on either side of it while neither of those two cells is, during a real albeit very small interval, able to “see” the other.
That’s no different than the case you’re thinking of, except in terms of scale.
But those two cells have “seen” each other in the past. We’re talking about a structure so large that its parts have NEVER been in causal contact with each other.
Even if you assume that, say, the causality issue makes it impossible without some supernatural factor, “Is there anything supernatural?” still isn’t anything like precisely analogous to “Is there an omniscient, omnipotent supernatural force that acts like an intentional agent?” And what the OP was asking was whether there’s “Any Physics or Science reason”, which means any supernatural speculation is irrelevant to the original question anyway–once you’ve gotten to “No, it’s impossible without the supernatural,” you’ve already answered the question.
Well, keep in mind that a big crunch scenario hasn’t been ruled out yet, even if (I think) it currently looks like the smart money is against it. So, it’s possible that, in the long run, causality will eventually catch up.
But, even in that case, I think you’re still right. A cell that was only causally connected (and doing work that was useful to itself and/or the body it’s part of) for the second half of its lifetime (to oversimplify a bit) isn’t really impossible, but it’s at least wildly improbable.
I think that’s probably a bit too strong. Rather, I would say that no evidence has been observed that the Universe is finite, and in the absence of such evidence, it’s arguably the simpler hypothesis that it’s infinite.
On the Big Crunch, there we can say that the evidence is actually against it, since the dark energy or cosmological constant or whatever the Heaven it is would absolutely prevent it. On the other hand, though, there’s enough that we don’t know about the dark energy that it’s really not all that implausible that it might some day turn off, or even reverse, in which case the Crunch is back on the table.