The cosmic web is a filamentary pattern of galaxies that can be seen on
vast scales throughout the cosmos. Similar to blackberries in a muffin, the
material in the universe is distributed unevenly, clustering in some places
but possibly missing in others.
Based on a series of models, scientists have started to investigate the
heterogeneous structure of the universe by considering the distribution of
galaxies as a collection of points rather than as a continuous distribution,
similar to the individual bits of matter that make up a substance. This
method has made it possible to measure the relative disorder of the universe
and use mathematics created for materials science to better comprehend the
universe's basic structure.
Oliver Philcox, a co-author of the research, said, "What we discovered is
that the distribution of galaxies in the cosmos is quite distinct from the
physical characteristics of conventional materials, having its own unique
signature.
Salvatore Torquato, a frequent member and visitor at the Institute for
Advanced Study and Lewis Bernard Professor of Natural Sciences based in the
departments of chemistry and physics at Princeton University, and Oliver
Philcox, a visiting Ph.D. student at the Institute from September 2020 to
August 2022 and currently a Junior Fellow in the Simons Society of Fellows,
hosted at Columbia University, collaborated on this work, which has just
been published in Physical Review X.
The two researchers examined open modeling data produced by the Flatiron
Institute and Princeton University. One billion dark matter "particles" make
up each of the 1,000 simulations, and the groups they create through
gravitational development act as stand-ins for galaxies.
The connections between pairs of galaxies that are topologically linked to
one another using the pair-connectedness function are one of the paper's key
findings. The research team demonstrated that, on larger scales (on the
order of several hundred megaparsecs), the universe approaches
hyperuniformity, whereas on smaller scales (up to 10 megaparsecs), it
becomes almost antihyperuniform and strongly inhomogeneous. Based on this
and the variety of other descriptors that emerge in the theory of
heterogeneous media.
Scale is a major factor in how order and chaos are viewed, according to
Torquato. "Similar visual effects are produced by Georges Seurat's
pointillist method in the picture A Sunday on La Grande Jatte; the piece
looks highly ordered up close and disorganized from a distance. The degree
of order and chaos in the world is more subtle, comparable to the infinitely
interpretable Rorschach inkblot test."
The researchers were able to create a consistent and impartial paradigm for
assessing order thanks to statistical tools, particularly nearest-neighbor
distributions, clustering diagnostics, Poisson distributions, percolation
thresholds, and the pair-connectedness function. Their conclusions therefore
apply to a variety of other dynamical physical systems even though they were
formulated in a cosmic setting.
Future developments in both astronomy and condensed matter physics are
likely as a result of this multidisciplinary research. Many other aspects of
the universe, such as cosmic voids and the ionized hydrogen bubbles that
developed during the universe's reionization period, can be studied with
these instruments in addition to the spread of galaxies.
On the other hand, new cosmological phenomena may also shed light on
different Earthly material systems. Although the team is aware that more
research will need to be done before these techniques can be used with
actual data, this work offers a powerful proof-of-concept with enormous
promise.
Provided by
Institute for Advanced Study