Cosmos explicitly fractal | Beyond the Beyond from Wired.com

[Roger Bagula]

Cosmos explicitly fractal
By Bruce Sterling EmailOctober 30, 2008 | 1:54:27 AM
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14200-galaxy-map-hints-at-fractal-universe.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

(((Old news here, but that's an interesting universe. WHY is it
"fractal"?))) Link: Galaxy map hints at fractal universe - space - 25
June 2008 - New Scientist Space.

roup together to form galaxies, galaxies clump together to form
clusters, and clusters amass into superclusters.

The point of contention, however, is what happens at even larger scales.
According to most physicists, this Russian doll-style clustering comes
to an end and the universe, on large scales, becomes homogeneous.

But a small team of physicists, including Francesco Sylos Labini of the
Enrico Fermi Centre in Rome and Luciano Pietronero of the University of
Rome argue that the data shows the opposite: the universe continues to
look fractal as far out as our telescopes can see. (((It's an ITALIAN
fractal universe. Beat that!)))

(((And it s fractally Russian, too!))) (...) According to their latest
paper, which has been submitted to Nature Physics, Sylos Labini and
Pietronero, along with physicists Nikolay Vasilyev and Yurij Baryshev of
St Petersburg State University in Russia, argue that the new data shows
that the galaxies exhibit an explicitly fractal pattern up to a scale of
about 100 million light years.

And they say if the universe does become homogeneous at some point, it
has to be on a scale larger than a staggering 300 million light years
across. That's because even at that scale, they still observe large
fluctuations – a cluster here, a void there – in the matter
distribution....

[Knecht]

Post by Roger Bagula
Cosmos explicitly fractal
By Bruce Sterling EmailOctober 30, 2008 | 1:54:27 AMhttp://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14200-galaxy-map-hints-at-fra...
(((Old news here, but that's an interesting universe. WHY is it
"fractal"?))) Link: Galaxy map hints at fractal universe - space - 25
June 2008 - New Scientist Space.
roup together to form galaxies, galaxies clump together to form
clusters, and clusters amass into superclusters.
The point of contention, however, is what happens at even larger scales.
According to most physicists, this Russian doll-style clustering comes
to an end and the universe, on large scales, becomes homogeneous.
But a small team of physicists, including Francesco Sylos Labini of the
Enrico Fermi Centre in Rome and Luciano Pietronero of the University of
Rome argue that the data shows the opposite: the universe continues to
look fractal as far out as our telescopes can see. (((It's an ITALIAN
fractal universe. Beat that!)))
(((And it s fractally Russian, too!))) (...) According to their latest
paper, which has been submitted to Nature Physics, Sylos Labini and
Pietronero, along with physicists Nikolay Vasilyev and Yurij Baryshev of
St Petersburg State University in Russia, argue that the new data shows
that the galaxies exhibit an explicitly fractal pattern up to a scale of
about 100 million light years.
And they say if the universe does become homogeneous at some point, it
has to be on a scale larger than a staggering 300 million light years
across. That's because even at that scale, they still observe large
fluctuations – a cluster here, a void there – in the matter
distribution....

Excellent! Maybe we are on the same page after all. See my 11/01/08
post to sci.astro.research, which is copied below.

Some scientists express surprise and consternation over the new
research by Kashlinsky et al (0809.3733 at arxiv.org) concerning the
coordinated bulk flow of galaxy clusters, with velocities on the
order
of 600-1000 km/sec, towards one general direction wrt the CMB. These
results seem to require anisotropic cosmological structure, i.e.,
matter distributions, on length scales that exceed the size of the
observable universe. Those of us who favor fractal cosmological
paradigms expected this type of phenomena, and predict a steady
drumbeat of further discoveries conflicting with the assumptions of
isotropy and homogeneity, when treated as anything more than crude
local averages in a fundamentally fractal Universe.

Some interestng quotes related to the research:


(1) "It's basically a slope across the [observable] universe" -
Kashlinsky


(2) These results are extremely difficult to accommodate within the
paradigm of gravitational instability in the concordance [Lambda-]CDM
cosmology." - Mersini-Houghton and Holman (arxiv:0810.5388v1)


(3) "It's yet another piece of evidence that, on the largest scales,
either we're misunderstanding something or discovering something
about
the [observable?] universe" - Starkman


Is cosmological "homogeneity" to be found over the next horizon? Or,
are we finally working up the courage and open-mindedness to consider
the possibility that a radical new fractal paradigm is called for?


Yours in science,
Knecht
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

[Rev. 11D Meow!]

viva la difference!

Post by Roger Bagula
Cosmos explicitly fractal
By Bruce Sterling EmailOctober 30, 2008 | 1:54:27
AMhttp://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14200-galaxy-map-hints-at-fra...
(((Old news here, but that's an interesting universe. WHY is it
"fractal"?))) Link: Galaxy map hints at fractal universe - space - 25
June 2008 - New Scientist Space.
roup together to form galaxies, galaxies clump together to form
clusters, and clusters amass into superclusters.
The point of contention, however, is what happens at even larger scales.
According to most physicists, this Russian doll-style clustering comes
to an end and the universe, on large scales, becomes homogeneous.
But a small team of physicists, including Francesco Sylos Labini of the
Enrico Fermi Centre in Rome and Luciano Pietronero of the University of
Rome argue that the data shows the opposite: the universe continues to
look fractal as far out as our telescopes can see. (((It's an ITALIAN
fractal universe. Beat that!)))
(((And it s fractally Russian, too!))) (...) According to their latest
paper, which has been submitted to Nature Physics, Sylos Labini and
Pietronero, along with physicists Nikolay Vasilyev and Yurij Baryshev of
St Petersburg State University in Russia, argue that the new data shows
that the galaxies exhibit an explicitly fractal pattern up to a scale of
about 100 million light years.
And they say if the universe does become homogeneous at some point, it
has to be on a scale larger than a staggering 300 million light years
across. That's because even at that scale, they still observe large
fluctuations – a cluster here, a void there – in the matter
distribution....

Excellent! Maybe we are on the same page after all. See my 11/01/08
post to sci.astro.research, which is copied below.

Some scientists express surprise and consternation over the new
research by Kashlinsky et al (0809.3733 at arxiv.org) concerning the
coordinated bulk flow of galaxy clusters, with velocities on the
order
of 600-1000 km/sec, towards one general direction wrt the CMB. These
results seem to require anisotropic cosmological structure, i.e.,
matter distributions, on length scales that exceed the size of the
observable universe. Those of us who favor fractal cosmological
paradigms expected this type of phenomena, and predict a steady
drumbeat of further discoveries conflicting with the assumptions of
isotropy and homogeneity, when treated as anything more than crude
local averages in a fundamentally fractal Universe.

Some interestng quotes related to the research:


(1) "It's basically a slope across the [observable] universe" -
Kashlinsky


(2) These results are extremely difficult to accommodate within the
paradigm of gravitational instability in the concordance [Lambda-]CDM
cosmology." - Mersini-Houghton and Holman (arxiv:0810.5388v1)


(3) "It's yet another piece of evidence that, on the largest scales,
either we're misunderstanding something or discovering something
about
the [observable?] universe" - Starkman


Is cosmological "homogeneity" to be found over the next horizon? Or,
are we finally working up the courage and open-mindedness to consider
the possibility that a radical new fractal paradigm is called for?


Yours in science,
Knecht
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw