Formation and evolution of cosmic structures

 

 

So far I have mostly discussed the hierarchical nature of structure formation, while smaller units cluster to form larger units, which again cluster to form even larger units, which in turn cluster to form even larger units and so on. I have also briefly mentioned how this hierarchical clustering is followed by spiral structures at all scales: A smaller spiral lies at the heart of a larger spiral, which in turn lies at the heart of another bigger spiral, which in turn is enwombed in the heart of an even larger spiral and so on.

This spiral formation, in hierarchically ascending scales, is caused by the presence of dual structure, where each structure, forming the dual, is itself a spiral (although I shall mostly talk about the duality, the structures become more and more three dimensional as one approaches the core, which results in the formation of 3D knot, and tri-fold structures at the centre). All individual structures in the universe are born out of the interactions of the spirals sitting at the cores.Wherever one may look, and at whatever scale one may study the universe, one should be observing this duality/three foldedness - for example, in the centers of the stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, superclusters of galaxies, or the entire observable universe.

I have mentioned both, dual and triple cores because the cores may show two, or three ejection mouths depending on the evolutionary stage of the object. When the core is tightly bound it forms a 3D spiral form and in such objects three mouths may be seen. However, in disk-like structures the ejection mouths will be prominent. In order to avoid confusion I shall only mention the duality because it often appears in cosmic structures. I shall come back to the three foldedness in the later part of the book.

In the dual formation of structures, one structure feeds on the other. Two different scenarios occur depending on the nature of the interacting structures. If the two halves are of equal strengths they live by feeding on each other while maintaining their individual existence. In the cases where one is weaker, the stronger one grows by feeding on the weaker one, which ultimately merges with it. More the larger object feeds on its counterpart, more destructive forces come into play and the growing object faces a destiny of death, while it starts to disintegrate. Thus, after reaching a critical stage of growth the larger structure will start breaking apart. By feeding on these broken parts smaller structure may grow, until they too face the same destiny. Thus matter moves from one to the other partner of the dual structure as dance of death and life upholding the existence and formation of cosmic structures at every scales.

If one studies a cosmic structure in greater and greater details one will soon discover that the duality seen at the core does not end there. Each partner of the dual structure forming the core possesses a similar dual structure at their own centers. When one looks deeper inside those tiny structures one discovers dual structures at their hearts too. It continues in hierarchically ascending scales. As one studies the structure in deeper and deeper depths, this duality does not stop until a third structure appears at the core. At that stage the 3D spiral possessing three arms, twist to form three outpouring mouths. It happens when the disk-like structures turn into structures resembling the 3D stars. However, one may observe the same spiral unfoldment, resulting from the interactions of contending structures, appearing again and again at every observational scales. This is the most central aspect of structure formation.

 

The universe follows definite rules about how the structures should evolve from birth to death. These rules appear to be the same irrespective of how small or how large the structures may be. What is applicable in the realm of the stars is applicable in the realms of galaxies, clusters and superclusters as well. The way the spiral arms emerge, and form hierarchical shells after shells, and then evolve form a flat disk-like structure to a star-like 3D shape are the same for all.

If birth and death are two aspects of the same process, one may wonder what differences are there when one talks about birth and death. As said before, while things decay in one place and eject structures, the contending structures embolden themselves in another place by the process of making the ejected material as their own, which happen through the process of merging. When something is born in the universe, it does not appear from the void. Instead, the material appears from other places and start merging there, while forming the seeds of a new birth of a structure. Every beginning of a structure takes place when two objects merge and form an union. This formation, which is more disorderly at the start, becomes more and more orderly in its arrangement of material, which follow prescribed rules. This process of growth brings evolutionary changes in the appearance, and behavior of the growing and evolving structure. At one stage this orderly arrangement may come to a halt, because things get too packed and tight inside. When this critical stage is reached, the structure starts disintegrating and breaking apart into smaller units. These disintegrated pieces are hurled outward in the surrounding. When two such pieces meet they may merge, and form the seed of a new birth at a different place. This breakdown at one place and merging at another place occur simultaneously as a process common to both of the dual structures, which are caught in a perpetual dance of life and death. Thus while death and birth are only two different aspects of the same process, birth represents the phase of merging and growth, which brings disorderly state in more and more orderly form, and death follows when the process of ordering has attained its maturity. Then the nature reverses its course and builds disorder instead, by starting the process of breakdown. As the objects break apart, material are hurled in the surroundings, while generating more and more disorder. However, nature does not allow the disorder to continue beyond a critical limit. When the critical point is reached, it reacts back by forming the seeds of growth in the system, bringing forth the forces of life once more. Thus the birth and death proceed simultaneously hands in hands as two aspects of the same.

In this dance of life and death, there exists a definite set of rules how things will grow and evolve, and how things will die and decay. There is no accidental happenings in the universe. Everything that happen, are well orchestrated and occur in accordance with the rules, which are eternally prescribed. One may wonder, if it is so, why one observes random and accidental behaviors in the realm of the atomic world? I shall not discuss this question in length here, because it will require another book. Shortly, the reason could be the fractality of the design that lies at the heart of all objects. The randomness arises due to our observational inabilities to follow microscopic particles through an intricate multifractal network, which looks more and more complex as one resolves it in greater and greater details. We can not track the motion does not mean that it is embroiled in a chaotic chance ridden world, where no rules and regulations apply. Universe has laid the same rules and regulations for every objects, however small or large they may be. These rules and regulations are inscribed in the multifractal design, which lies at the heart of the structure formation. The fractality ensures that what is local is also global. Through an intricate network the universe decides similar destinies for things happening locally as the entire system existing globally everywhere. One can grasp these rules by studying the fractal geometrical nature of the cosmic build up.

As said, birth means coming together of two objects, which are themselves nothing but clusters of smaller objects, forming an union, which grows and evolves. Every objects in the universe truly embody hierarchically embedded spirals. However, when one studies the object at a particular scale, one observes a spiral at that scale. Birth taking place at that scale of observation will therefore involve two interacting spirals. I shall first discuss how such interacting spirals, forming the seeds of growth of a structure, will evolve. After that I shall describe how such mature structure will start decaying.

As I have said before, the interactions of two smaller spirals, forming the core, generates a bigger spiral, whose arms gradually evolve by accumulating material from the surroundings, which are hurled by structures dying nearby. As it evolves, the arms wrap tighter together around the core, while making the inner structure more and more dense and compact. This results in the barred spirals galaxies to evolve towards the spiral galaxies. As these structures, looking like whirlpool, evolve further they assume forms where larger arms stack up over smaller arms. They look like shells inside shells. More these shells evolve, more and more they look like rings or doughnuts. This is how the spiral form evolves into a structure which appears as an elliptical. These oblong ellipticals turn more and more spherical at the end. This is when they start breaking apart and begin their journey to death.

 

 

The description given above sounds as if the evolution of an object takes place in a fixed region of space, where the object undergoes transformation of shape by accumulating material from the surrounding. In reality, the region, where the evolution takes place, also grows with the aging of the object. So, when one observes an elliptical, the size of the structure that began as a spiral, has expanded many folds beyond the boundaries where once there existed a smaller spiral structure. Instead of a small spiral it has now become a giant spiral. The elliptical structure that one sees constitutes only the inner part of such a supergiant spiral structure, surrounded by many dwarf galaxies. With evolution more arms have formed, and those arms are now stacked over each other in a hierarchical manner forming shells after shells, and filling greater regions of space. The smaller spiral structures, from where the large structures evolve, also enwomb ellipticals at their cores. These small ellipticals lying at the nuclei of spirals are tiny structures, which form at the cores of the supergiant spiral structures, like the elliptical M87 galaxy in Virgo cluster.

So growth essentially means the expansion of the spiral form, which develop more and more arms, which stack up over each other, and occupy larger and larger regions in space. As the spirals become bigger and bigger they bear smaller spirals in their wombs at each descending scales. In all cases, however small or large, at the very deep core all structures form rings. Inside these rings there exist 3D spiral knots.

In the case of our Milky Way galaxy, the core consists of ring-like structures of the size of only tens of light years. In comparison, the rings of M87 extend up to tens of thousands of light-years. So, one may view the growth of a structure as magnification of the small seed structure, where the morphologies of the baby and the giant remain essentially the same. It is a conventional view among the researchers in the field that the galaxies start with irregular shapes, then develop into barred spirals, then turn into spirals, which are followed by the ellipticals. Nature's evolutionary scheme truly may not follow such simple transformations of morphologies with the increasing age. Like the example of a baby, who does not change his or her basic morphological features when he or she becomes old, the cosmic structures too grow keeping its morphological characteristics intact. The baby accretes matter only becomes bigger and bigger in size, while all parts of the body develop. The so-called ellipticals are the cores of the giant structures, which carry similar morphological features as a baby structure, from where it started to become a giant. In the baby phase it may have resembled like a loosely bound spiral, apparently containing no central core. However, even such tiny structure will possess core, though very small. Such tiny cores will carry similar features as seen in the ellipticals. Only difference is that they can be millions of times smaller in sizes. So, once the ordering mechanism of nature has taken its hold, growing does not mean simple morphological changes, but an accretion and expansion at the same time. Only at the stage when turbulence dominates, i.e. at the time of the whirling and breakup, the structures may appear irregular in shapes. When one takes a picture of a giant structure, the most luminous of it, which is its core, becomes the dominating feature in the picture, which blinds the view of the less luminous objects, which surround the central region. However, aging means a more tighter assembly of arms, which form more and more rings around the cores. More the rings develop, the more destructive forces come into play. Thus by growing, the structures sow the seeds of their own destructions and fall into disorder again, when the morphological pattern seen during growth may get disrupted.

Though I have illustrated the story of the evolution of the cosmic structures with the examples of galaxies, the same will happen in other realms - bigger, or smaller. For example, the stars too, which may vary from hundreds of billions to thousands of billions of times smaller in sizes than the galaxies, seem to pass through similar evolutionary processes. Interactions between two nebulous structures may start the tug of war and set the whirling and churning a dual spiral system. The interactions will generate spiral disks, which contain the seeds of the stars at their cores. The young disks, containing a tiny star at its heart, then form shells after shells in ascending scales around their cores,. At the end, when the growing phase comes to an end, the structure will disintegrate by ejecting the outer shells, while leaving a 3D spiral knot at the core. These ejected shells may merge with other shells and start the process of a new growth, or may disintegrate and dwindle in space as dusts. While the outer shells are hurled in their journeys, the inner rings may gradually become unstable and break apart into beads by forming dwarf structures. This process of dying by ejections and breaking apart of the rings into small structures could be a universal mechanism in the cosmos.

Like the galaxies, the stars also appear in different shapes and forms. Some appear hundreds, or thousands of times bigger than the size of the sun; some are tens or hundreds of times smaller than it. When viewed as tiny lights in the sky they all give the impression of spherical shapes embodying individual single stars. In fact, most of them are either double, or multiple stars.

The conventional models of star formation based on the gravitational instabilities assume that the stars start as spherical clouds, which may flatten due to rotation. Stars may possess all kinds of shapes - from spiral to the elliptical and the spherical. In a binary system, where two structures interact closely, none of the component stars are spherical. In fact, no star is a spherical ball of fire. When outer shells of the disks are ejected they look like two lobed objects possessing 3D spirals at their centres. Under higher resolution of observations every star, how big or small they might be, should reveal the double lobed nature, and the 3D spirals at the core. Our sun, though it looks like a smooth round ball of fire to our eyes, may possess such a typical structure of a star. Seen in x-rays, it reveals the 3D spiral and ejections from the centre, which generate two lobed structure. The hot plasma move from equator to the poles and return back to the equator again passing through the stellar interior, They constitute the structures of the lobes, which interact through convective streams, among others. The stellar surfaces are folded structures which form fractal assembly of similar folding at smaller and smaller scales. Each of these folds carry turbulent plasma, which may possess multiple centres of vorticities. These vorticity centres form spots from where coronal ejections occur. I shall discuss this again later.

The structures which one observes in a star are also visible in the supermassive stars, or tiny dwarf objects. The variations of the appearances depend on how big the stars are, and how spread are their nebulous haloes, as well as the stages of their growth or decay. However, in all cases, the centre will contain a 3D-spiral form. In more evolved large stars ring like structures may develop around the 3D-spiral, which may appear as a round object to our eyes. These rings in turn will be surrounded by spiral disks in a manner similar to the formation and growth seen in the galaxies.

 

During the formation as well in the phase of decay, the stars eject structures. In the growth phase the violent turbulence at the centre, acted upon by the magnetic forces, cause the spiral arms to twist, tear and move away from the centre. In the conventional vocabulary these phenomena are believed to be the cause of superwind. From the pieces, hurled into the space, dwarf stars may evolve and surround the stars as haloes. At the stage when the central turbulence has spread outward and the system has settled into ring-like shells, the star may become unstable. One can see this phenomena in the giant stars, called red-giants. Reaching this age the stars break apart by ejecting shells after shells, which fly as nebulous haloes. When one observes these nebular structures around the dying stars one may see many shapes and forms.

The process of growth and decay and the nature of evolution which we see in galaxies and stars, are also similar to what, may happen in the clusters of stars, clusters of galaxies and the superclusters. It is very difficult to believe that the universe would start acting differently at even larger scales. The examples I have given show the mechanism by which the cosmic structures recirculate its material. More evolved the structure becomes, it tries to self-feed itself, which means that whatever material are ejected from the centre will return back to the centre again. If this self-regulating process does not work in forming a stable core the structure blows off and disintegrates. These blown off pieces go to feed the contending structures nearby, and try to form stable self-regularized structure once again. Thus the universe exists by critically balancing between order and chaos.

Now one may ask: Will the universe disintegrate one day after it has evolved to its mature age? The answer will depend on how we define the boundary of our universe. This boundary can not be known before we can find out where the universe ends.This finiteness, or infiniteness issue is marred by problems of conceptual nature, as I have discussed in the previous chapter. Until this boundary is determined by observational means, we would not know what is the true nature of the biggest structure. If the universe is a 3D vortex, like an evolved star, it should blow off and disintegrate, or die a slower death and turn into a dwarf. If it is a structure like a spiral star, where turbulent matter are wrapped as spirals inside spirals inside spiral and so on, it will continue to evolve until a self-regularized state is achieved. Or, may be, it is neither of the above two possibilities. It could be a critically balanced self-regularized system, which oscillates between order and chaos, while it feeds itself in the same way always. While dying it comes to life, where life and death define the two aspects of the same process. Growth, death and evolution have no distinct meaning in an eternally unchanging entity, which is oscillating in order to bring forth its existence from the death of itself. Instead it is nothing but a knot, which resides inside another bigger knot, which resides inside another even bigger knot and so on. These knots, in every scales, are the originator of the spiral forms. The functions of the cosmic knots are to channel whatever matter are going out from the centre to return to the center again. By tightening and loosening these immensely complex fractal knots the universe regulates the inflow towards and outflow from the centre. But how can we observationally verify if the universe has achieved such a state where the self-regularization mechanism may work? Unless one stands outside the universe, how could one find it out? And if there is an outside, the universe should not define the boundary of the system that we want to study. From the observational point of view we can only say that our local supercluster lies in a region, that forms the core of a big cosmic structure. How can we be sure that this entire structure, which we observe, is not in turn a part of a structure existing in a higher scale? We can not know of things unless they can be observed by instrumental means. So it brings us to the limit of the empirical science.

 

Anyway, one can think of the model of the universe like a whirlpool created by a waterfall at the mouth of a river. In this example, the whirling structure is created by external forcing of the water falling from the mountain top. The turbulence is sustained by a constant amount of energy supply while the vortex remains confined within the boundary created by the surrounding boulders and rocks. Inside this vortex structure the water streams roll into tubes and filaments. These filamentary structures weave a very complex network. The filaments split, merge and split and merge again and again. By this process it forms structures and then brings their annihilations in turn. Thus the structures die and decay, grow and regenerate everywhere. However, the global structure of the whirlpool remains basically the same with the passage of time. This perpetual structure lasts as long as the cascading streams falling from the mountain, which create the churning, replenish the amount of water being dissipated from the vortex centre by ejections of streams. In the case of the universe the ejected streams return, through an intricate network of structures, to feed the vortex motion. Thus whatever goes out returns again. In the universe the amount of matter streaming out from the centre are balanced by the amount of matter flowing in. By this way it sustains its perpetual existence, where it neither dies, or grows or evolves. Within this timeless whole, the structures form and decay, and create an ever fluctuating arena of life and death.

Before going further in discussing the whirlpool model, which may explain the phenomena we observe in the universe, I shall first describe the geometrical elements which play central roles behind the creation and destruction processes going on in the cosmos.

To summarize, the basic elements of structure formation are spirals and rings hierarchically piled up in shells after shells. The spiral arms, that are ejected from the centre, consist of fractal networks of filamentary structures, which form surfaces of fractional dimension greater than 2. These surfaces carry the imprints of the cosmic design and look like bend and curved elongated bow-shaped leaves holding vortices in the middle. From the tips of these leaves grow very similar leaves of bigger dimensions, which wrap around the smaller leaves like mothers protecting their babies. From the tips of these bigger leaves, even bigger leaves grow which enwrap their daughter. In this way the cosmic structures grow from the center to outward.

 

As said, the leafy-shapes are fractal surfaces made of intricately interwoven filamentary structures. The filaments weave a structure which grow as shells inside shells inside shells and so on, on both sides of the centres of the cosmic objects, and generate a pattern which can be described as knots inside knots inside knots and so on. Like in a magic world, these knots, which form the structures of the stars, are knitted together in a similar manner to form the structures of galaxies, which can be described as similar fractal knots - only billions and billions times larger- which are in turn studded in the cosmic design. Similarly, the galaxies are only tiny knots in the scale of the superclusters, where the same cosmic design is generated by knitting the "galaxy knots" together. It is truly unfathomable, and surpasses all understandings and the power of comprehension of the human mind. One feels awestruck and bows in front of the altar where the universe has created this cosmic miracle.

The universe is so profound that even when one picks a particle of dust from the earth one may see the image of the whole universe in that micro-world. One can discover similar entaglement of filamentary structures made of even smaller particles as one sees in the entire universe. In fact, in one's amazement one discovers that the buildings of polymers and proteins resemble the formation of knots, inside knots, inside knots as seen in the cosmic arena. I shall not digress on this subject in this book, and hold my discussion only to the phenomena in the cosmic scales.

To summarize, the universe is an enormously complex entanglement, which can not be grasped by any stretch of human imagination where micro-worlds are inseparably entangled with the macro-worlds. However complex it may appear, nothing is accidental in the universe. This complexity is built by following a specific set of rules about how the structures should be arranged. The most fundamental of all is the cosmic design, the spiral and the knot. In the next chapter I shall discuss how this cosmic design is built and woven together. After that I shall discuss about the knots, which form the central elements in the cosmic dynamics.