The Universe as a Cellular System

Abstract

Cellular systems are observed everywhere in nature, from crystal domains in metals, soap froth and cucumber cells to the network of cosmological voids. Surprisingly, despite their disparate scale and origin all cellular systems follow certain scaling laws relating their geometry, topology and dynamics. Using a cosmological N-body simulation we found that the Cosmic Web, the largest known cellular system, follows the same scaling relations seen elsewhere in nature. Our results extend the validity of scaling relations in cellular systems by over 30 orders of magnitude in scale with respect to previous studies. The dynamics of cellular systems can be used to interpret local observations such as the local velocity anomaly as the result of a collapsing void in our cosmic backyard. Moreover, scaling relations depend on the curvature of space, providing an independent measure of geometry.