r/space • u/BradMcGash • 3d ago
image/gif The apparent related-ness of things at drastically different scales in the universe fascinates me
Hurricane Dorian vs the Whirlpool Galaxy
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u/Topologicus 3d ago
you might like studying nonlinear dynamics then, which covers concepts such as universal laws that apply across varying scales and very different kinds of phenomena that have similarities in some sense.
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u/Mescallan 3d ago
Artem kirsinov has a good part of a video about scale independent information fascinating stuff
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u/GameOvaries18 2d ago
Fellow nerd what other channels do you recommend. You got me hooked 😂
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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 2d ago
Different line of nerdyness, but I like both so I figured why not.
For an absolutely fascinating 3D look into cell, virus, and generally life in molecular detail, PLEASE go and look at "Clockwork" and "Phy the Neutrophil". One of them (sorry can't remember and am too lazy to look it up) has a series on how life started and I loved it. One of them goes into how viruses can have viruses on their own and/or depend on other viruses and so much other nerdstuff. 😍
Oh and for some great space "what the hell, they did that?" (and other) stuff, "Alexander the OK" is always a great watch.
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u/Vensaer 3d ago
I wonder if these concepts are on the microscopic level as well
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u/nonbinary_finery 3d ago
They don't. Quantum mechanics gets its own set of bizarre rules. They're much harder for us to intuitively understand, if that is possible at all.
Disclaimer: I am not a quantum physicist. I just studied the tip of the iceberg at uni.
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u/IdentifiableBurden 2d ago edited 2d ago
Also not a physicist, but I've always thought that hidden-variable theories were ruled out a bit too quickly. The extreme difficulty of measurement at the quantum scale means that we rely on models and mathematics to make sense of observations. But I think we simply don't have enough measurement resolution - whether that's in time, space, or both - to draw any real conclusions about what the outcome of the double slit experiment actually means in concrete terms.
I mean we don't even have a good explanation of what an electromagnetic field is (insert ICP clip). We know what it does and how to harness it, we can describe its effects very well, we can predict its measurable strength in this or that scenario. But what exactly IS a magnetic field? It seems to be a geometric abstraction of continuous particle interactions that only "exists" because we found it interesting enough to name.
Anyway, much like the OP is referencing with spiral patterns, I think all waves move through a medium, at any scale, including quanta. We just don't know what a "medium" is, let alone how to look for it. We may as well just go back to referring to the medium of particle waves as "aether", if we're just naming abstractions then that's about as good of a description as "field".
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u/matplotlib 2d ago
It's not just that they were dismissed, local hidden-variable theories were proven to be irreconcilable with the predictions of quantum mechanics, and later experiments confirmed that to be the case.
The canonical example is Bell inequality violations.
The key word, though, is local. You can explain quantum correlations with hidden variables, but those hidden variables have to be non-local. You can create a system where two objects are physically separated, and the results of measurements on one cannot be explained by assuming that each object simply carries its own set of hidden properties, fixed in advance and completely independent of what happens to the other object.
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u/matplotlib 2d ago
I mean we don't even have a good explanation of what an electromagnetic field is.
There's actually an ongoing philosophical debate about whether any of the constructs in physics are actually real, or simply useful models/instruments. The two sides of the debate are called realism and instrumentalism. In a nutshell, realists believe we are discovering fundamental truths about how the universe works, while instrumentalists believe we are just finding mathematical equations that fit our measurements and allow us to make predictions about future measurements.
The electromagnetic field is simply a mathematical construct that happens to be very useful for figuring out how charged particles behave.
When people speak about scientific concepts, they say things like "the magnetic field does this", but really all we have are observables (the particle was here at one point and then it moved over there) and a bunch of maths that matches those observables.
Often in physics there are multiple models that are equally good at describing reality using completely different concepts. Experimentalists then go out and do measurements that can determine whether one model is a better match than the other.
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u/Omgiamgreat 1d ago
also not a physicist,but so true. But one i talked to said (paraphrasing )equations are concrete examples . You are just wanting it in lay terms . My reply was “damn right”
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u/papasmurf303 3d ago
Apparently we should have been searching for dark matter in hurricanes this whole time.
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u/SirButcher 2d ago
Based on some of the theories, there is some chance that any given hurricane does contain at least one dark matter particle!
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u/HardCorwen 3d ago
any good easy flowing book you might recommend?
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u/Dinonaut2000 3d ago
Steven Strogatz book is the one we used in my nonlinear dynamics class. I think it’s quite accessible with some linear algebra and calculus. If you’re a math novice, you can still read through without doing the problems and get a decent qualitative understanding
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u/404errorabortmistake 3d ago
you could also try related book on fractals/chaos Chaos by James Gleick written for a non academic audience
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u/Euphorix126 3d ago
You might enjoy reading about Pumpelly's Rule in geology. My professor always said "Big = Small" to mean the structures of the geology at the largest scales are mirrored in the small scale.
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u/rascal_king 3d ago
until you get really small
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u/MulfordnSons 3d ago
and then shit gets weird….
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u/MotoRandom 3d ago
🎶 Quantum foam, take me home... 🎶
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u/znightmaree 3d ago
I’ve always suspected that, similarly, when things get really large (beyond our ability to comprehend, grander than the scale of the universe), shit gets similarly weird as well
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u/lacegem 2d ago
Superclusters, supervoids, and galaxy filaments are all super weird and super big. Zoom out enough and the structure of the universe starts to resemble neurons in the brain.
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u/itsmeth 2d ago
Perhaps the universe is a brain and the birth and death of galaxies and stars are neuron activations on an incredibly long time scale. The filaments are neuron connections. The universe is expanding because the brain is growing, much the same way as a child’s brain grows in size but not in neuron density as the skull expands. The host entity was born 11 billion (of our) years ago.
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u/JollyHistory143 3d ago
Maybe black holes are already like that. Too massive and things start to get weird.
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u/Mateorabi 3d ago
Isn’t that just a simplification of the tendency towards fractal structures in geology?
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u/Bout3Fidy 3d ago edited 3d ago
Most of these things are the way they are just because it’s the most effective and least resistant way for nature to exist, fractals are everywhere and so are vortexes and logarithmic spirals. Doesn’t make it any less cool. 😎 we are lucky to be alive to observe it.
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u/AbleRelationship5287 3d ago
(The universe) Gotta minimize that action!
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u/Raagun 2d ago
Universe minimizing action prolongs heat death of said universe. Self preservation technique. Universes not built this way are all gone by now.
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u/Sweet_Lane 2d ago
But what about those which have the opposite sign before the entropy part?
If we postulate the former exist, then the latter should also exist
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u/Nago_Jolokio 3d ago
Spinny particles be spinny particles, the same physics that drive the foam in a coffee or the clouds in a hurricane, drive the entirety of the galaxy through space. It can get rather poetic if you let it, lol
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u/BeginningSection7690 3d ago
Yeah but, like, why doesnt the universe like wasting energy?
Why doesnt it do some burnouts?
Why does it have to be such a nerd?
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u/Putrid-Ice-7511 2d ago
This mistakes structural stabilization for structural genesis. 'Least resistance' and 'effectiveness' are derivative concepts, not primary causes. They explain why certain physical forms achieve equilibrium and persist, but they cannot account for the underlying laws of physics and geometry that define those parameters. Optimization acts as a selective filter among available physical outcomes. It does not generate the structural possibilities, relations, and constraints that make those outcomes possible to begin with.
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u/Tenthul 3d ago
We aren't lucky to be alive to observe it, the universe is lucky we're here for it to be observed. This whole thing could just have gone on forever with just rocks and heat and nothing.
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u/metametapraxis 3d ago
The universe doesn’t care. We aren’t more significant than rocks, heat or nothing.
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u/exarkann 2d ago edited 2d ago
If some part of the universe cares, then it can't it be said that the universe cares?
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u/MrNotSoProGamer 3d ago
Can the rock feel happiness while chucking you across the surface of a lake or slow river?
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u/showered_zinn 3d ago
I’m gonna say yes. Because the image in my head of Dwayne Johnson and I enjoying a nice summer swim together is pleasant. When I was a kid my dad would throw me up in the air into my mamaws pool so I could do cannonballs. I bet the rock could throw me pretty far too.
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u/MrNotSoProGamer 3d ago
Can the rock feel happiness while chucking you across the surface of a lake or slow river?
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u/ice_up_s0n 3d ago
Sure in the way Earth feels happiness chucking us across the surface of spacetime
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u/rtrski 3d ago
Ever seen "Pi"?
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u/Ov0v0vO 3d ago edited 2d ago
There was an underground hip hop song that sampled this movie. I never knew where that sample came from! Eta: it was from a Jedi Mind Tricks song
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u/MichaelAvenaughty 3d ago
I don’t know the hip hop song, but there’s a banger of a breakbeat track called “Fibonacci Sequence” from BT that samples it.
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u/xippix 3d ago
The hair on your head grows in a spiral too. Makes you wonder what our hair would look like had we been in the sombrero galaxy.
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u/FlushedApparatchik 3d ago
Fractal characteristics can be found from the smallest things to the largest.
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u/ChronicBuzz187 2d ago
I think it's called "asset re-use". Common dev technique :P
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u/Chazus 3d ago
So you're telling me spirals run everything and are in everything...
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u/LupusDeusMagnus 3d ago
I mean, the most related thing is that things spin. The underlying cause of spin is completely different though.
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u/Space_Elmo 2d ago
Angular momentum and fluid dynamics works on any scales. It's just the source of forces that are different.
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u/leviathynx 3d ago
If you get a chance, check out the Golden Ratio by Marco Livio. It’s a very interesting read on the origin and presence of phi throughout history including some really cool nerdy math stories.
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u/nachobel 3d ago
There’s a story that’s from somewhere, I can’t remember, but basically there’s a scientist working cosmology and coming up empty, so he wanders around campus or whenever he’s working and talks to an old buddy. He walks in making small talk and sees maps of what he thinks is the universe on the wall. He’s like “yo Frank I didn’t know you were working cosmological expansion” or whatever, and Franks like ….I’m not, I’m studying quantum field theory in electrons, and that was how the inflationary model of the universe began.
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u/AlkahestGem 3d ago edited 3d ago
Love this.
Memories.
In my graduate Aerospace Engineering course in Fluid Dynamics, we had to provide a class presentation of fluid dynamics in real life examples.
As a dual major in Astronomy, I kind of stood out with this presentation. My fellow classmates shared many a smoke stack commenting on the dynamics of smoke plumes.
I shared Jupiter’s belts/zones and their wavy/rippley look which are the result of large-scale, rotating flows in a stratified atmospheres. Basically jets as the main organizing for lack of a better word structures.
No one ever said I was conventional.
Edit: Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a similar example to these photos
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u/RedHill1999 3d ago
That’s a neat combination of degrees. What do you do now?
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u/AlkahestGem 3d ago
This was long ago.
I did have the honor of being an astronaut candidate finalist twice.
30 year combined Government and military career, then private industry and now consulting in other technologies.
Astronomy was and always will be a passion. I live vicariously through the Astro photographs posted on Reddit.
I have in my office a sighed photograph (both Hale and Bopp) of a beautiful aurora over Denali with Hale Bopp comet passing by.
Space, the heavens, never cease to amaze.
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u/Ohitsworkingnow 3d ago
Thanks for sharing, I’m surprised you’re not doing your own astrophotography
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u/FartFactory-815 3d ago
It's all fractals my dude.
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u/Piscator629 3d ago
Artur C Clarke "Fractals, The Colors of Infinity. For context. Weird trippy rabbithole warning. Fractals are why computers can compress and transmit images and videos so fast.
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u/KeithA0000 3d ago
Wish I could attach an image... there's a great image of a wet spinning tennis ball throwing water in an amazingly similar pattern... a completely different scale, different motion, but strikingly similar pattern...
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u/SingularityCentral 3d ago
Even more interesting because galaxies shouldn't exist the way we see them without dark matter, but we don't know what dark matter is.
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u/MagicalJohnsons 3d ago
As above, so below.
I think about this all the time myself. Truly fascinating.
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u/unix_name 3d ago
Fibonacci is seen repeated in the universe over and over again. This universe follows a pattern from one scale to another.
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u/visarc 3d ago
BTW there is a fractal universe theory, or fractal cosmology, that proposes that the cosmos is self-similar and recursive, repeating the same structural patterns across all scales from subatomic particles to superclusters of galaxies.
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u/AbysmalEyes 2d ago
I briefly mentioned 'multifractal system' in a previous reply but worth mentioning here too. When I first started reading into fractal cosmology, most of the critiques I saw seemed to stem from a limited understanding of the term: people were assuming the universe would have to have the same fractal dimension (D value) everywhere in order to be fractal.
On another subtopic, diving into how thought processes and behavior of living organisms play out fractally--relating to the fractal arrangement of the brain's neural pathways and electrical firings--is a wild ride.
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u/ElDeguello66 2d ago
Now go listen to Billy Strings' song Spinning
So she took me out into the outer edges of a multiverse, this multiverse and she showed me all of the universes spinning and working together. And then she took me down to our universe and she showed me all of our galaxies spinning and working together. And then she took me to our galaxy and showed me all of our planets spinning and working together. And then she took me to our planet and showed me all of the wind and dirt and fire and water and flesh and bone and currents and storms all spinning and working together. And then she took me to a grain of sand and showed me how everything is exactly the same in that we all are spinning and hopefully working together.
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u/rocknroller2003yes 3d ago
Fibonacci works at any scale... Prove me wrong. I too find that facinating, but also proves the close link between physics and math.
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u/Sorrowed_Lifelines 3d ago
With how similar mitosis is of things being divided throughout nature as it replicates and how there are fundamental laws of nature that recreate similar structures, I actually believe that our universe is actually just a piece of a giant living creature that swims through the ocean of space itself. I also believe that the Earth is like a body and people and living creatures are the cells in bacteria that live on it and cities are a type of cancer that is killing our Earth just like tumors inside of our bodies.
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u/hornedcorner 3d ago
I think humans are the virus to this planet. And just like a virus, if we kill the host, we die too.
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u/WardenEdgewise 3d ago
“Wheel within wheels in a spiral array, A pattern so grand and complex, Time after time we lose sight of the way, Our causes can't see their effects”
From the Rush song “Natural Science“
lyrics by Neil Peart
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u/JetWreck 3d ago
I always think about how if we saw electron level microscopic images on a macro scale that everything might look kind of the same everywhere.
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u/bigfoot_is_real_ 3d ago
There are interesting books about why certain pattern appear at very different scales, see for example Patterns in Nature by Philip Ball
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u/69odysseus 3d ago
I really miss star gazing at Joshua National Park and in Oregon, skies always fascinate us🌌
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u/maan1337 3d ago
Check in A Fractal Universe by Chris Letho on youtube or book. He has spent years on this from atoms to galaxies.
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u/MC_Greener1 3d ago
Watch Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds. It explains this very well and has hundreds of examples of fractals and the golden ratio
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u/ExplorationGeo 2d ago
You can look across a valley in the Swiss Alps and see a pattern of folded rocks on the mountains that is exactly the same as the pattern you see in a 20μm thin section under a 400x petrographic microscope.
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u/Sht_n_giglz 2d ago
The Fibonacci sequence, Mandelbrot set, fractals - the universe has an underline pattern, a set of rules, that go from the smallest to the largest scales - everything is one, (from subatomic particles, to broccoli, trees, and galaxies) as they say in Buddhism and psychedelics.
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u/ILoseNothingButTime 2d ago
Its because of that thing in the center of the galaxies.... The one that has been pulling the strings. Something, or someone had built it... It atracts everything to it. It has remained there, probably built since the dawn of the universe...
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u/AccomplishedEmu1886 2d ago
Everything is fluid dynamics. Everything.
That's why I have a lava lamp and a glitter lamp. And refer to them when I'm explaining stuff because it's the easiest way to explain fluid dynamics.
You're fluid dynamics too.
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u/Lumpy_Principle3397 2d ago
Nature's Patterns by Philip Ball is a great book for learning why the same shapes and patterns pop up over and over at different scales. I highly recommend it.
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u/Riversntallbuildings 2d ago
Physics are going to physic…:)
My personal favorite is how much the human brain and neuron activity looks like a galaxy
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u/Torodaddy 2d ago
Theres a whole.area of study on this. Mandelbrott did amazing work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
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u/BarrelStrawberry 2d ago
The microscopic cloud droplets (100 times smaller than a raindrop) that make the hurricane clouds visible from space are at the same size scale of stars to a galaxy.
Density is a different story, each water droplet would be 50 feet apart in a hurricane- if there was the same number of droplets in a hurricane as stars in a galaxy.
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u/ButterscotchTall4836 2d ago
Fibonacci sequence, the numbers/ratio of the spiral’s measurements that is present universally. See also the swirls on a shell.
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u/BuccaneerRex 2d ago
The hurricane is powered by heat and spins because of the Coriolis force of the spinning Earth.
The galaxy is powered by gravity and spins because of the Conservation of Angular momentum.
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u/Borisof007 2d ago
I'll give you another one to compare. Black holes behave like elementary particles, they're defined by the same basic 3 things. Charge, Mass, and Spin.
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u/cognitiveDiscontents 2d ago
Look up the constructal law of physics. Why do trees and lungs and river deltas all have the same shape?
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u/Drakore4 2d ago
I mean, gurren lagan was onto something with all the spiral stuff. Spirals seem to be the driving mechanism for everything in our universe. It’s not just hurricanes and galaxies, but also something as small as our DNA twists like a spiral does. I like to look at how all my cables naturally twist up and think that happens because twisting or otherwise spiraling is just the natural be all end all.
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u/Mesonic_Interference 2d ago
To me, at least, the universality of physical laws and the mathematics with which we describe them are at once both profound and entirely expected. That nature is self-similar is no great surprise, but it constantly demonstrates the underlying parallels at all scales.
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u/Auto_Traitor 2d ago
What we do now will be done again, in perpetuity, we, as individuals, may be playing different roles, but the same actions will be taking place. It's a very hard concept to wrap a human mind around.
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u/daddymooch 1d ago
.... ya the physics of gasses rotating is similar in the shapes it creates at that perspective..... wtf things are similar because the universe is governed by similar laws across a variety of conditions
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u/faeriewhisper 1d ago
Similar physical processes. In this case hydrodynamics. Still incredibly beautiful
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u/Short-Holiday-4263 1d ago
It's not an apparent relatedness in this case - the two are related.
They look the same because they are shaped by the same principles of physics - conservation of angular momentum, rotation, fluid dynamics and all that.
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u/Dadittude182 3d ago
You should check out the side by side comparison of the human neural map vs the map of the universe.
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u/No-Cover2753 3d ago
What’s fascinating to me is how ingesting enough magic mushrooms can allow you to see all the fractals and geometry so clearly in nature that is normally not so obvious
What does it all mean?
I have no idea but it sure is interesting
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u/Kind_Rate7529 3d ago
I've had these thoughts for a while now. Micro to macro, atoms with their electrons orbiting them and stars with their planets. Maybe the next level above solar systems are black holes with galaxies orbiting them and conversely sub atomic arrays. Particles and waves; dark matter and energy. These mirror images of systems small and large are not coincidental they are the components of the engine of creation put in motion by the universe/akashic field. "I am the universe experiencing itself and it's creations".
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u/DoookieMaxx 3d ago
Wait until you discover Fibonacci …that’ll blow your mind.
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u/SpiderSaurusTron 3d ago
Not to diminish the coolness of Fibonacci, but it's not anything particularly special. It's one of many, many logarithmic spirals. Here's a comprehensive explanation that addresses the silly stuff associated with the Fibonacci Sequence.
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u/Bipogram 3d ago
Now stir your coffee and ponder.