Galaxies as fluctuations in cosmic stellar liquid

Abstract

Large self-gravitating stellar systems share with correlated liquids in condensed matter physics a pattern of hierarchical density variations. While it takes the microscopic time resolution to discern the correlated dynamics of the critical opalescence, characteristic astronomical times hide fluctuational dynamics of stellar liquids, where, governed by interstellar correlations, denser clusters of stars assemble and disperse. For a semi-isolated galaxy, these dynamical fluctuations are dense globular clusters. For a galaxy cluster, these dynamical fluctuations are the member galaxies, elliptical ones in the interior. Bright over-density fluctuations, galaxies, are exhibits of only a small fraction of stars found in a cosmic stellar liquid, the dark matter. Here I report a fluctuational gravitational collapse as a property of a self-gravitating system in the virial equilibrium.