Our universe is like a giant human brain, say scientists

LONDON: The universe is similar to a huge human brain, scientists have found.

A new study investigated the differences and similarities between two of the most complex systems in existence, though at entirely difference scales: the cosmos and its galaxies and the brain and its neuronal cells.

They found that while the scale is clearly different, the structure is remarkably similar. In some cases, the two systems seemed more similar to each other than they did to the parts that make them up.

It suggests that vastly different physical processes can lead to very similar complex and organised structures.

For example, the human brain works because of the network of nearly 70 billion neurons that together make it up. The universe is thought to have at least 100 billion galaxies.

In each system, they are assembled together in a complex web or network, spread out in long filaments and nodes that link them up. Those spreading nodes are familiar to pictures of both the universe and the brain, and account for some of the superficial similarities in images.

But in each system, those threads only make up about 30 per cent of the mass.

In each, some 70 per cent of the mass is actually made up of parts that appear to be passive: the brain’s water, and the universe’s dark energy.

To dig further into those similarities, researchers compared the way those galactic networks form with sections of the brain. They looked to understand how the mater was spread across the two very different networks.

“We calculated the spectral density of both systems. This is a technique oten employed in cosmology for studying the spatial distribution of galaxies,” said Franco Vazza, an astrophysicist at the University of Bologna who worked on the study with University of Verona neurosurgeon Alberto Feleti.

“Our analysis showed that the distribution of the fluctuation within the cerebellum neuronal network on a scale from 1 micrometer to 0.1 millimetres follows the same progression of the distribution of mater in the cosmic web but, of course, on a larger scale that goes from 5 million to 500 million light-years.”

They also examined the ways that the webs of neutrons and galaxies connect up – once again finding noticeable similarities, with the systems seeming more similar to each other than to their component parts. To do so, they compared the average number of connections between each of the nodes, and how they cluster.

“Once again, structural parameters have identified unexpected agreement levels. Probably, the connectivity within the two networks evolves following similar physical principles, despite the striking and obvious difference between the physical powers regulating galaxies and neurons,” said Alberto Feleti.

“These two complex networks show more similarities than those shared between the cosmic web and a galaxy or a neuronal network and the inside of a neuronal body.”

A paper describing the findings, ‘ The quantitative comparison between the neuronal network and the cosmic web,’ is published in the journal Frontiers of Physics.

According to a report published earlier this year, our universe is much more “homogenous” than would be expected, scientists have said ater producing a detailed map of mater in the cosmos.

The findings could suggest that there is something deeply strange about our understanding of the universe, which could require a new kind of physics or fundamentally alter our understanding of dark mater.

The results come from the Kilo-degree Survey, or KIDS, which uses the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to map the distribution of mater across our universe. So far, it has charted roughly 5% of the extragalactic sky, from an analysis of 31 million galaxies that are as much as 10 billion light years away.

Producing such a detailed map allows scientists to examine the “clumpiness” of how galaxies are distributed through the cosmos. That allows researchers to build up a picture of all mater in the universe, of which some 90 per cent is invisible, made up of dark mater and tenuous gas.

That in turn allows astronomers to watch the processes that gradually make the universe less homogenous, or evenly distributed: parts of the universe that have more than the usual mass atract mater from their areas around them, which makes them less similar to those other parts. The expansion of the universe counteracts that growth.

Since both of those processes are driven by gravity, they can be used to test the standard model of cosmology and the assumptions underlying our physics. Since that allows us to predict the way that the variations in density would change as the universe aged, those predictions can be put to the test by examining how homogenous or differently clumped the universe really is.