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

B. Our Whole Scale EcosmoVerse Description Project

Frebel, Anna. Searching for the Oldest Stars: Ancient Relics from the Early Universe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. An MIT theoretical and experimental astrophysicist describes the state of our collaborative scientific reconstruction of how the celestial raiment of starry galaxies came to originally form, actively evolve and provide a fertile milieu for life and limb so long we peoples after could achieve this vital cosmic chronicle. (Who are we to Thee to be able to do this (The Tree of Life) and for what phenomenal cause?) For an example of her later work, see From Nuclei to the Cosmos at arXiv:1806.08955.

Astronomers study the oldest stars in the universe in much the same way that archaeologists study ancient artifacts on Earth. Here, Anna Frebel, who is credited with discovering several of the most primitive stars, takes readers into the depths of space and time to provide a firsthand account of stellar archaeology. Weaving the latest findings in astronomy with her own insights, Frebel explains how sections of the night sky are "excavated" in the hunt for these rare relic stars, and how this quest is reveals new details about the earliest universe. She describes how the very first stars formed soon after the big bang and then exploded as supernovae, leaving chemical fingerprints She shows how these traces provide clues to the cosmic origin of the elements, early star and galaxy formation, and the assembly process of the Milky Way.

Gabrielli, Andrea, et al. Statistical Physics for Cosmic Structures. Berlin: Springer, 2005. Noted more in Part II, Current Vistas, this work achieves deep theoretical support for an independent, self-organizing impetus which is exemplified from universe to human.

Gaite, Jose. The Geometry and Formation of the Cosmic Web. arXiv:1810:02311. The Universidad Politecnica, Madrid astronomer continues his career studies of dynamic celestial geometries which are found to be self-similar as everywhere else. See also his papers Fractal Analysis of the Large-scale Stellar Mass Distribution in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (March 2018) and The Projected Mass Distribution and the transition to Homogeneity (1810.03539).

The cosmic web structure is studied with the concepts and methods of fractal geometry, employing the adhesion model of cosmological dynamics as a basic reference. The structures of matter clusters and cosmic voids in N-body simulations or the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are elucidated by means of multifractal geometry. Multifractal geometry can encompass three fundamental descriptions of the cosmic structure, namely, the web structure, hierarchical clustering, and halo distributions. In this way, a unified theory of the large-scale structure of the universe seems to emerge, although some aspects of the multifractal spectrum cannot be explained yet. The formation of the cosmic web is best modeled as a type of turbulent dynamics, generalizing the known methods of Burgers turbulence. (Abstract)

The cosmic web is a foam-like structure, formed by a web of sheets surrounding voids of multiple sizes. In fact, the range of sizes is so large that we can speak of a self-similar structure. This motivates its study by means of fractal geometry. In fact, fractal models of the universe predate the discovery of the cosmic web structure and arose from the idea of a hierarchy of galaxy clusters that continues indefinitely towards the largest scales, an idea championed by Benoit Mandelbrot. (1) The simplest strictly singular and continuous mass distribution consists of a uniform mass distribution on a fractal set, namely, on a self-similar set of the type of the Cantor set. This mass distribution has just one type of singularities. Therefore, it is a monofractal, described by just one dimension, the Hausdorff dimension of the fractal set. This type of fractal has a sequence of individual empty voids that is characterized by the Zipf law. (27)

Gott, Richard. The Cosmic Web: Mysterious Architecture of the Universe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. A Princeton astrophysicist whose career has pursued an inherent structure which he thought the whole universe appears to have here describes his quest and what the webwork he actually discovered.

J. Richard Gott was among the first cosmologists to propose that the structure of our universe is like a sponge made up of clusters of galaxies intricately connected by filaments of galaxies — a magnificent structure now called the "cosmic web" and mapped extensively by teams of astronomers. The volume is his insider's account of how a generation of undaunted theorists and observers solved the mystery of the architecture of our cosmos.

Guglielmo, Magda, et al. A Genetic Approach to the History of the Magellanic Clouds. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Online August, 2014. With Geraint Lewis and Joss Bland-Hawthorn, University of Sydney astrophysicists propose this novel procedure drawn from the field of bioinformatics to aid their studies of interstellar phenomena. As a result, a unique application of evolutionary biology terms, techniques, and selective processes to these far celestial reaches is achieved. The method is akin to the popular Bayesian statistics, also Markov processes, computational algorithms, which inference, altogether treat the cosmos as some manner of a universal Darwinism.

The two Magellanic Clouds are a duo of irregular dwarf galaxies visible from the southern hemisphere, which are members of our Local Group and may be orbiting our Milky Way galaxy. (Wikipedia)

The history of the Magellanic Clouds is investigated using N-body hydrodynamic simulations where the initial conditions are set by a genetic algorithm. This technique allows us to identify possible orbits for the Magellanic Clouds around the Milky Way, by directly comparing the simulations with observational constraints. We explore the parameter space of the interaction between the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way, considering as free parameters the proper motions of the Magellanic Clouds, the virial mass and the concentration parameter (c) of the Galactic dark matter halo. In both orbital models presented here, the mutual interaction between the Magellanic Clouds is able to reproduce the observed features of the Magellanic System. (Abstract excerpts)

Why Do We Need a Genetic Algorithm? Emulating the biological concept of evolution, the genetic algorithm (GA) is a powerful tool to explore a complex parameter space. In biology, given a set of possible genetic sequences (“population of individuals”), the fittest organisms are those strong enough to survive and reproduce themselves in their environments: nature selects creatures with a high probability of survival (“survival of the fittest”). In optimisation problems, given a set of “possible solutions”, the best is the one which better adapts to the requirements imposed by the model. The genetic algorithm mimics the reproduction, mutation and selection to arrive at the fittest set of parameters. Keeping the same terminology from the biological world, a gene is the value of a particular parameter and the phenotype encodes the collection of all parameters which describe a possible solution. (16)

A simple genetic algorithm consists of the following steps: (i) Start by randomly generating an initial population of phenotypes, each representing a possible solution. (ii) Evaluate the fitness of each member of the current population. (iii) Select a pair of genotypes (“parents”) from the current population and breed them, based on their merit. In this way, two new solutions are generated (“offspring”). Repeat this step until the number of offspring produced equals the number of individuals in the current population. (iv) Replace the old population with the new one. (v) Repeat from step (ii) until the fitness criterion is satisfied. (16-17)

Hamilton, Chris and Jean-Baptiste Fouvry.. Kinetic Theory of Stellar Systems. arXiv:2402.13322. IAS, Princeton and Sorbonne University astrophysicists contribute a 66 page, 182 reference Tutorial as a latest statement of the dynamic sunny stars. Nine segments such as Orbits in mean field potentials well covers the technical content.

Stellar systems - star clusters, galaxies, dark matter haloes, and so on - are ubiquitous characters in the evolutionary tale of our Universe. This tutorial article is an introduction to the collective dynamical evolution of the very large numbers of stars and/or other self-gravitating objects that comprise such systems, i.e. their kinetic theory.

Harrison, Fiona and Robert Kennicutt, Editorial Chairs. Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 2021. This is a 615 page encyclopedic document with hundreds of contributors is broadly from the NAS, and involves two new giant telescopes. Online in November 2021, and is available is several formats from its website. The project and volume could well exemplify a scientific spiral to a dynamic worldwise collaborative endeavor. As the extended quotes cite, the subject field is no less than near and far planetary, stellar, galactic and cosmic reaches, with as especial search for Earth analogs. Over 800 White Paper proposals with thousands of authors were contributed to the project. See A New 10-Year Plan for the Cosmos by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times (Nov. 4, 2021) for a good review.

We live in a time of extraordinary discovery and progress in astronomy and astrophysics. The next decade will transform our understanding of the universe and humanity's place in it. Federal agencies that fund these broad fields request a survey to assess the Nation's efforts to advance our cosmic knowledge. This 2020s edition identifies the main science goals and an ambitious program of ground- and space- based activities for these ten years and beyond. A major incentive is to study extrasolar, especially Earth-like, planets, the most energetic processes in the universe, and the evolution of galaxies. (Overview)

We live in an extraordinary period of discovery in astronomy and astrophysics. Six Nobel Prizes have been awarded over the past decade alone for discoveries based on astronomical data (dark energy, gravitational waves, neutrino oscillations, the discovery of exoplanets, cosmology, supermassive black holes). Many of the ambitious scientific visions of the 2010 New Worlds New Horizons decadal survey are being fulfilled, but momentum has only grown. We stand on the threshold of new endeavors that will transform not only our understanding of the universe and the processes and physical paradigms that govern it, but also humanity’s place in it. (Main Summary, S-1)

The survey’s scientific vision is framed around three broad themes by which to carry forth astronomic discoveries and progress so far in the 21st century. The first, Worlds and Suns in Context builds on advances in observations and analyses of exoplanets and exostars. The next segment aims to understand their formation, evolution, and interconnected nature. New Messengers and New Physics will study gravitational wave detection, conduct sky spectrum surveys from the ultraviolet and visible to microwave and address the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and cosmic inflation. The third theme, Cosmic Ecosystems (quote next) will link observations and models of the stars and galaxies, and the energetic processes that couple their formation, evolution, and destinies. (Scientific Opportunities, 1, 2)

Cosmic Ecosystems The physical universe is characterized by hierarchical scales from stars and planetary systems to galaxies and a cosmological web of complex filaments connecting them. A major advance has been the realization that the universe and all its constituent systems are part of an evolving ecosystem. The galaxies are ecosystems of their own, with a further condensation of matter to form stars and planets balanced by “feedback” from stellar winds, outflows, and supernovae that return mass and energy to the gaseous environment. The black holes that form within massive galaxies also play a key role in this feedback process. Unraveling the nature of this connection is one of the key science goals of the decade. (Part 1, Page 7 excerpt)

Hooper, Dan. At the Edge of time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. The University of Chicago astrophysicist dutifully retraces cosmic history from quantum gravity (10-43 sec), grand unified (10-35 sec) and inflation eras on to quark-gluon plasma, protons, neutrons, atoms, dark matter phases all the way to today, some 13.8 billion years later. But for this natural philoSophia site, we ought to reflect upon our auspicious Earthwisw ability to be a genesis universe’s way of respectively realizing itself.

Ji, Zhiyuan and Mauro Giavalisco. Reconstructing the Assembly of Massive Galaxies. II. Galaxies Develop Dense Stellar Cores as They Evolve toward Quiescence at Cosmic Noon. arXiv:2208.04325. We choose this entry by UM Amherst astronomers among many studies across the 21st century universe frontier for its exemplary content as worldwise explorers go forward with a seemingly innate, unlimited capability. Again how fantastic is it that we peoples can explore, reconstruct and quantify such wide and deep celestial realms, as if performing, unawares as yet, some intended Ecosmic sapiens function of self-description and realization. See also for example Galaxy Clustering from the Bottom Up by Carolina Cuesta-Lazaro, et al at 2208.05218.

I also wish to record that living a few miles away, for many years I have attended the Astronomy department weekly lecture symposium with presenters such as Debra Fischer (Yale), Fred Adams (U. Michigan), Tom Arny (UM), Anna Frebel (MIT), Nick Cowan (McGill) and many more.

We use the SED-fitting code Prospector to reconstruct the nonparametric star formation history (SFH) of massive star-forming galaxies (SFGs) and quiescent galaxies (QGs) at redshift to investigate the joint evolution of galactic star-formation activity and structural properties. We find significant correlations between the SFH and their morphology. We discuss possible physical scenarios for the observed evolution and find that our empirical constraints are in good quantitative agreement with the model predictions. (Excerpt)

Keeley, Ryan, et al. Reconstructing the UniVerse. arXiv:2010.03234. We cite this entry by five astrophysicists with postings in Korea, China and Mexico because its auspicious title could well allude to the phenomenal ecosmic project that we Earthlings altogether might be now embarking upon. We test the mutual consistency between the baryon acoustic oscillation measurements from the eBOSS SDSS final release, as well as the Pantheon supernova compilation.

Kinney, Will. An Infinity of Worlds: Cosmic Inflation and the Beginning of the Universe. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2022. A veteran SUNY Buffalo physicist writes a latest theoretical survey of this apparent instant origin. A novel expansion goes on to consider a multiversal occasion.

In the beginning was the Big Bang: an unimaginably hot fire almost fourteen billion years ago in which the first elements were forged. The physical theory of the nascent universe—the Big Bang—was a most consequential development in twentieth-century science. And yet it leaves many questions unanswered. Kinney argues that cosmic inflation is a transformational idea in cosmology, changing our picture of the basic structure and raising questions about what we mean by a scientific theory. He explains that inflation is a remarkable unification of inner space and outer space, in which the physics of the very large (the cosmos) meets the physics of the very small (particles and fields), closing in a full circle at the first moment of time.

Kogut, Alan. et al.. The Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE): Mission Design and Science Goals. arXiv:2405.20403. We cite this entry by seventeen astroscientists from across the USA onto the UK, France and beyond led by NASA Goddard as one instance of many ongoing worldwise endeavors to carry out what seems to be our intended participatory work of universal self-representation and affirmation.

The Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) mission concept plans to measure the energy spectrum and linear polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). PIXIE opens a broad discovery space for the origin, contents, and evolution of the universe. Measurements of small distortions from a CMB blackbody spectrum provide a robust determination of the mean electron pressure and temperature in the universe while constraining processes including dissipation of primordial density perturbations, black holes, and the decay or annihilation of dark matter. We describe the PIXIE instrument sensitivity, foreground subtraction, and anticipated science return from both the baseline 2-year mission and a potential extended mission. (Excerpt)

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