III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

B. Our Whole Scale EcosmoVerse Description Project

After theoretical Quantum Cosmology, here we present a survey of astrophysical vistas that have expanded from Galileo’s moon to an infinite multiUniVerse. Our “own” cosmos in its temporal course is graced by a trillion galaxies, each with billions of stars and a quintillion orbital worlds in and out of habitable zones. A good recent example is Finding Our Place in the Universe by Helene Courtois.

2020: Two decades in, an international collaborative astronomy by way of land-based and satellite telescopes, sophisticated instrumentation, analytic techniques, computational displays and more, has allowed we Earthlings to fill in and flesh out the temporal formation of a trillion galaxy, sextillion star spacescape. A prime aspect noted in Universal Evolution is a widest stochastic, contingent variety. We will enter its newly found occasion of myraid habitable planetary zones further on. Streaming 3D videos of intersecting galaxies and black holes, for example, can now inform and illustrate our awesome humankinder achievement, and future task of conceptual ecosmic self-description.

Berlinski, Vladimir and Marc Henneaux. The Cosmological Singularity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Courtois, Helene. Finding Our Place in the Universe. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019.

Codis, Sandrine, et al. On the Connectivity of the Cosmic Web. arXiv:1803.11477.

Frebel, Anna. Searching for the Oldest Stars. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Kobayashi, Chiaki, et al. The Origin of Elements from Carbon to Uranium. arXiv:2008.04660.

Libeskind, Noam and Brent Tully. Our Place in the Cosmos. Scientific American. July, 2016.

Perlov, Delia and Alex Vilenkin. Cosmology for the Curious. International: Springer, 2017.

Vazza, Franco. The Complexity and Information Content of Simulated Universes. arXiv:2007.05995.

Tyson, Neil de Grasse, et al. Welcome to the Universe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Vogelsberger, Mark, et al. Cosmological Simulations of Galaxy Formation. Nature Reviews Physics. 2/1, 2020.

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). www.desi.lbl.gov. A main website for this large American and Earthican decadal endeavor with much scientific and descriptive information about it. In April 2024 a flood of first year results appeared both on the arXiv.com site and in Astro journals which merited a lot of science news notice. A major finding already is that a “mysterious” dark energy component seems to actually vary in strength rather than be a fixed quantity, which would then affect the rate of cosmic expansion. See for example A Radical Solution to the Hubble Tension Problem at 2404.08586 and Interpreting DESI's evidence for evolving dark energy at 2404.08056.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will measure the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the universe. It will obtain optical spectra for tens of millions of galaxies and quasars, constructing a 3D map spanning the nearby universe to 11 billion light years. The DESI Survey is being conducted on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. DESI is supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science to perform this Stage IV dark energy measurement using baryon acoustic oscillations and other techniques that rely on spectroscopic measurements.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, our understanding of the universe has changed dramatically but it leaves fundamental questions unanswered. Two of these concern the universe’s energy budget: only about 5 percent of its total mass and energy can be accounted for by ordinary matter; 27 percent is dark matter inferred by its gravitational effects; and 68 percent is dark energy, responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. By measuring the expansion history over the past 11 billion years, DESI’s scientific goal is to constrain possible models of dark energy. To accomplish this goal, DESI will measure the position and velocity of about 40 million galaxies.

IAU Strategic Plan 2020-2030. iau.org/administration/about/strategic_plan. This is a 72 page International Astronomical Union document drafted by Debra Elmegreen, Ewine van Dishoeck, Renée Kraan-Korteweg and Piero Benvenuti to scope out a range of activities for new research projects and proposals, along with public and educational communication and engagement. Founded in 1919, the IAU publishes Symposia Proceedings of which the latest volume 353 is Galactic Dynamics in the Era of Large Surveys, see also Origins: From the Protosun to the First Steps of Life (345).

The International Astronomical Union, whose mission is to promote and safeguard astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation, has been the worldwide organisation of professional astronomers since 1919. In the last century, the endeavour of astronomy has grown and evolved in ways that could not have been anticipated or predicted at the time of the IAU’s founding. In the early 1900s, astronomers had not yet proven that there were other galaxies besides the Milky Way. The expansion of the Universe was unknown IAU Strategic Plan 2020 –2030. (8)

Now, a century later, we know that the Universe is teeming with planets beyond our Solar System; thousands have already been discovered. Supermassive black holes reside in the centres of massive galaxies, and manifest themselves as quasars in the early Universe. Nucleosynthesis is understood to fuel stars. The accelerating Universe is filled with dark energy and dark matter, and the baryonic matter of which we are made. Gravitational waves reach us following black hole and neutron star mergers. We are poised to be able to answer the age-old questions of our place in the Universe and whether or not we are alone. (9)

, . Xiao, Mengyuan, et al. PANORAMIC: Discovery of an Ultra-Massive Grand-Design Spiral Galaxy at z∼5.2.. arXiv:2412.13264. We cite this entry by twenty nine astroscientists in Switzerland, USA, Denmark, UK, the Netherlands, Australia, and France as one example among many collaborative findings each day of the FANTASTIC spatial and temporal, breadth and depth of our mid 2020s exploratory, instrumental and analytic astroscientific capabilities. Whom then are we Earthuman beings that can so readily accomplish such ecosmic descriptive self-discoveries?

We report the discovery of an ultra-massive red spiral galaxy, named Zhúlóng (Torch Dragon), in the JWST PANORAMIC survey, as the most distant spiral galaxy to date. Zhúlóng displays extraordinary properties: 1) a classical bulge in a exponential stellar disk, 2) a transition from the quiescent core with high stellar mass surface density 3) a high stellar mass, and a baryon-to-star conversion efficiency, and (4) a modest overall star formation rate. Altogether, Zhúlóng shows that mature galaxies emerged much earlier in the first billion years through rapid morphological evolution. (Excerpt)

Abbott, Brian, et al. Virtual Universe. Natural History. April, 2004. The American Museum of Natural History has created a digital universe atlas which spans 15 stages from earth’s solar system to the far edges of the cosmos. These images can be downloaded at www.haydenplanetarium.org/hp/vo/du/download.html.

Adhikari, Susmita, et al. Astrophysical Tests of Dark Matter Self-Interactions. arXiv:2207.10638. Fourteen scientists in India, the USA, the UK, Germany and Iceland post a 58 page study with 688 references about our latest worldwise collatorative engagement with this novel substantial phase. Our take is then meant to record these recent findings of its apparent tendency to interact and organize on its own. The copious entry is also a good instance of such 2020s Earthropocene era scientific frontiers, on the way it seems to a whole Ecosmos quantification. See also A Better Way to Define Dark Matter Haloes by this team at 2207.11827. (Whom are we Earthlings altogether to be able to do and learn these features? Whatever grand discovery might we begin imagine, if to allow the very thought?)

Self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) arises generically in physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model that have dark sectors with light mediators or strong dynamics. SIDM models provide a promising way to explain galactic rotation curves, and go onto form a versatile framework for interpreting astrophysical phenomena. This review provides a comprehensive explanation of the physical effects and structures of SIDM ranging from galactic satellites to clusters. The review then discusses the theoretical motivation for self-interactions, degeneracies with gravitational effects, extensions to the single-component elastic-interactions SIDM framework, and future prospects. (Excerpts)

Aerts, Conny. Probing the Interior Physics of Stars through Asteroseimology. arXiv:1912.12300. The KU Leuven, Belgium astrophysicist and Radboud University, Netherlands Institute of Astronomy director posts a 70 page popular review of this new cosmic field

Asteroseismology, the interpretation of the characteristics of oscillation modes in terms of the physical properties of the stellar interior, brought entirely new insights in how stars rotate and how they build up their chemistry throughout their evolution.

akrami, Yasher, et al. The Search for the Topology of the Universe has just Begun. arXiv:2210.11426. This entry by a 14 person team based at Case Western Reserve University and also in Japan, Norway, the UK and Spain ban illustrate the functional scope and open frontier quest that our valiant Earthumanity is commencing to embark upon with seemingly limitless intrinsic abilities to do so.

New large-angle cosmic microwave background anisotropies can facilitate wider searches for cosmic topology. We demonstrate that for standard geometries of flat spacetimes, off-diagonal correlations between microwave background harmonic coefficients over a wide range of scales encode significant information, even if the topology scale exceeds the diameter of the observable Universe. Observations have so far considered a small subset. (Excerpt)

Aluri, Pavan, et al. Is the Observable Universe Consistent with the Cosmological Principle?. arXiv:2207.05765. We continue to cite entries such as this 85 page, 555 reference paper by a 24 person team posted in India, Italy, China, the UK, Belgium, Korea, Poland, Germany, Portugal, the USA, Iran, and New Zealand as a prime example of 2020s global collaborations. In some four centuries since Galileo our human explorations and findings have gone from a moon to a Multiverse. An Earthropocene sapiensphere now proceeds apace to achieve breadth and depth quantifications of the whole ecosmic uniVerse. In a planatural philosophia, it could seem that these scientific missions may serve an intended, functional requirement of a cocreative self-description, comprehension, acknowledge and affirmation.

The Cosmological Principle (CP) is the notion that the Universe is spatially isotropic and homogeneous on large scales, which culminates in the highly predictive Λ-Cold-Dark-Matter (ΛCDM) model. Yet issues remain and here we review current observations that may deviate from the standard CP. Such as varying cosmological parameters, cosmic dipoles and galaxy spins. While it is possible that a host of observational systematics are impacting results, it is equally plausible that precision cosmology may have outgrown the FLRW paradigm, an extremely pragmatic but non-fundamental symmetry assumption. (Excerpt)

Ambjorn, Jan, et al. The Self-Organizing de Sitter Universe. International Journal of Modern Physics D. 17/2515, 2009. This paper by Ambjorn, Niels Bohr Institute, Jerzy Jurkiewicz, Jagellonian University, and Renate Loll, Utrecht University, is also available at arXiv:0806.0397. It is introduced by saying that the 1917 cosmological solution to Einstein’s field equations by the Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter continues to guide understandings of the nature of spacetime. (See also the author’s paper “Nonperturbative Quantum Gravity” in Physics Reports, online May 2012). Highly technical physics, (many more by each scientist at arXiv), as self-similar fractal’s appear to span from quantum to quasar.

We propose a theory of quantum gravity which formulates the quantum theory as a nonperturbative path integral, where each spacetime history appears with the weight exp (iSEH), with SEH the Einstein-Hilbert action of the corresponding causal geometry. The path integral is diffeomorphism-invariant (only geometries appear) and background-independent. The theory can be investigated by computer simulations, which show that a de Sitter universe emerges on large scales. This emergence is of an entropic, self-organizing nature, with the weight of the Einstein-Hilbert action playing a minor role. Also the quantum fluctuations around this de Sitter universe can be studied quantitatively and remain small until one gets close to the Planck scale. The structures found to describe Planckscale gravity are reminiscent of certain aspects of condensed-matter systems. (Abstract, 2515)

Borrowing a terminology from statistical and complex systems, we are dealing with a typical case of “self-organization”, a process where a system of a large number of microscopic constituents with certain properties and mutual interactions exhibits a collective behaviour, which gives rise to a new, coherent structure on a macroscopic scale.3 What is particularly striking in our case is the recovery of a de Sitter universe, a maximally symmetric space, despite the fact that no symmetry assumptions were ever put into the path integral and we are employing a proper-time slicing [11], which naively might have broken spacetime covariance. There clearly is much to be learned from this novel way of looking at quantum gravity! (2519)

Ambjorn, Jan, et al. The Self-Organizing Quantum Universe. Scientific American. July, 2008. A popular article on a breakthrough conception that fittingly comes by way of Jan Ambjorn at the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Jerzy Jurkiewicz from Jagiellonian University in Kracow, Poland, and Renate Loll with Gerald t’Hooft’s Institute of Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University. Braced by a history of quantum theory, with over ten years of technical papers accessible from the author’s websites, what is proposed is indeed a cosmic Copernican Revolution. The 20th century stringy models, inappropriate and signifying nothing, ought to be set aside. Rather a material nature graced everywhere by component ‘motes’ in relational motion reveals an innate propensity to organize and develop itself into increasingly complex phenomenal form. A fractal-like spacetime thus abides whereof the same creative patterns and processes repeat at each sequential scale and instance. Quite Nobel quality work, and if properly grasped, a profound genesis universe can begin to gain its theoretical explanation.

To put it differently, if we think of empty spacetime as some immaterial substance, consisting of a very large number of minute, structureless pieces, and if we then let these microscopic building blocks interact with one another according to simple rules dictated by gravity and quantum theory, they will spontaneously arrange themselves into a whole that in many ways looks like the observed universe. (43) Similar mechanisms of self-assembly and self-organization occur across physics, biology and other fields of science. A beautiful example is the behavior of large flocks of birds, such as European starlings. Individual birds interact only with a small number of nearby birds; no leader tells them what to do. Yet the flock still forms and moves as a whole. The flock possesses collective, or emergent, properties that are not obvious in each bird's behavior. (43)

The insensitivity to a variety of small-scale details also goes under the name of "universality." It is a well-known phenomenon in statistical mechanics, the study of molecular motion in gases and fluids; these substances behave much the same whatever their detailed composition is. Universality is associated with properties of systems of many interacting parts and shows up on a scale much larger than that of the individual constituents. The analogous statement for a flock of starlings is that the color, size, wingspan and age of individual birds are completely irrelevant in determining the flying behavior of the flock as a whole. (44-45)

Ananthaswamy, Anil. Somewhere Over the Cosmos. New Scientist. May 2, 2009. An update on the growing acceptance, percolation, even acquiescence, unto a scientific mindset (e.g., Alvin Toffler in the May/June 2009 Foreign Policy) of a multiverse infinity of cosmoses, of which our present universe is but a fleeting “random accident.” The aim of this bibliographic website is to document that such misconceived doom is wrong and destructive while in our midst a novel cosmic to human gestation is arising, if only we could altogether look for it.

Andrews, Robin George. A Dance that Stops 2 of Neptune’s Moons from Colliding. New York Times. November 21, 2019. The volcanologist and science writer (see his site) comments on Orbits and Resonances of the Regular Moons of Neptune by Marina Brozovic, et al at JPL, NASA, and SETI Institute including Jack Lissauer in Icarus (338/Art. 113462, 2020). Mathematical forces seem to be at work amongst the 14 moons and counting of this gas giant outer world which serve to direct orbital traffic so they stay in their lanes.

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