Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Understandable Universe

Given that several thinkers in different ways have pointed out this state of the Universe, it may not be a surprise to some readers that I write this.
In particular I was inspired by an article in Science magazine about the Cosmic Web. I start with a description of this Web and then I make the connections to understandability of the Universe.
Several years ago the so-called Lyman alpha forest was found. A series of spectrographic lines in the light of distant quasars are measured on Earth. In between us and the quasar there is a structure, first suspected by Zeldovich, and then calculated by Navarro, Frenk, and White, among others. This observation can be understood by assuming that the Universe has the structure of a "Cosmic Web".
Due to gravity matter clumps. One gets three main types of objects, surfaces, lines, and points, in three dimensions. A uniform distribution of elementary particles subject to the force of gravity attract each other due to a natural instability of a purely attractive force, as Zeldovich suspected, and later proved by Navarro et al.. Consequently, through linear paths, matter flows towards density singularities that coalesce to points, finally everything ends in black holes. The universe is in a continuous state of collapse: Linear motion balanced by rotational motion.
Our Milky Way together with Andromeda, the biggest two galaxies in our galaxy cluster, suck in matter continuously. This matter comes to us through the strings in the huge Cosmic Web, from all over the Universe. There are a few small galaxies moving faster than the rest that just came from these pipes.
Now what about understandability?
Some astronomers like Guillermo González from Iowa State University elevate this to a fundamental property of our Universe, I am not willing to say that much; but after reading his book "The Privileged Planet", I am willing to give this idea serious consideration. In any case the ideas presented here, in my mind, stand on their own ground.
The Cosmic Web is a fractal structure, as Swift said, fleas on top of fleas to infinity. Our own conception from an egg and a sperm, is through a similar process by which these little fast galaxies (sperms) come to our big galaxy (egg), to bring nutrients, and maybe information. Then our thoughts arranged themselves in a holographic structure as, David Bohm believed, going through a brain web, with similar dendrites, synapses, and neurons, as Santiago Ramon y Cajal proposed so many years ago.

3 comments:

in_the_berkshires said...

Hello EDUARDO CANTORA,

This is slightly off topic but I am a screenwriter and am curious to know more about David Bohm and his work for a project I am writing. Would you be willing to contact me? (You can google me to see I am a real writer). You can email me at mdn2003@roadrunner.com

Many thanks, Maria Nation

Eduardo Cantoral said...

Maria Nation,
I have written a few notes on Bohm. Here is the most recent link:
More thoughts on Bohm

Eduardo Cantoral said...

http://relevantscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-thoughts-on-bohm.html

Twitter Updates

Search This Blog

Total Pageviews