Podcaster: Mike Simmons; Guest: Mark Neyrick
Title: Big Impact Astrononomy: Cosmic Webs and Hands-On Learning with Mark Neyrick
Organization: Astronomy for Equity
Link : https://astro4equity.org/big-impact-astronomy-podcast/
Description: Mark Neyrick, cosmologist and research scientist at Blue Marble Space Institute, explains the cosmic web of galaxies and matter, and how this large-scale structure mirrors branching structures in nature, like trees and rivers.
He discusses the artistic and educational method of using origami and tactile models to teach complex cosmological concepts, making science more accessible and memorable.
Highlight: Origami models make cosmic webs tangible: By folding paper and fabric, Mark illustrates how dark matter forms cosmic filaments, offering a hands-on approach to understanding the universe’s structure.
Big Impact Astronomy: Through the Telescope is a video podcast that highlights the remarkable work of astronomy enthusiasts worldwide. Hosted by Mike Simmons, this podcast showcases how astronomy is used to improve lives in schools, refugee camps, hospitals, and more. Each episode features dedicated volunteers who introduce STEM in developing countries, inspire girls to pursue science careers, and bring hope to communities in crisis. Join us as we explore the stories of these unsung heroes making a difference through the wonders of the cosmos.
Bio: Mike Simmons is the founder of Astronomy for Equity ( https://bmsis.org/astro4equity/ ). Others on the team, including people around the world in astronomy and space exploration, authors and philosophers, designers and artists and more will be added as the website is developed.
Mike founded Astronomers Without Borders in 2006 to unite astronomy and space enthusiasts around the world through their common interests. During the UN-declared International Year of Astronomy 2009, Mike led the effort to organize the Cornerstone Project 100 Hours of Astronomy in more than 100 countries, with an estimated one million people looking through outreach telescopes in one night.
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Show Notes:
- 🎙️ Introducing Mark Neyrick Mike introduces cosmologist Mark Neyrick and his interdisciplinary approach to understanding the universe.
- 🌌 The Cosmic Web of Galaxies Mark explains the large-scale structure of the universe, describing how galaxies are connected by a cosmic web.
- 🌳 Nature’s Branching Structures Mark connects the cosmic web to branching structures found in nature, from neurons to rivers and trees.
- 📄 Folding the Universe: Origami & Dark Matter Mark explores how origami models help illustrate dark matter and the formation of galaxies.
- 🖐️ Tactile Learning & Science Education Mark discusses the value of hands-on learning, using origami to engage students in complex scientific concepts.
- 🕸️ Cosmic Webs and Spider Webs Mark draws parallels between cosmic webs and the organic networks of spider webs, connecting art and science.
- 🌍 Making Science Accessible Mark emphasizes the importance of community and making complex ideas in astronomy understandable for everyone.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Mike Simmons: Hello, everyone. My name is Mike Simmons, and I am the founder of Astronomy for Equity, and welcome to our podcast. Today, we have cosmologist Mark Nyrink. He has a PhD in astrophysics. He’s a colleague of mine and an affiliate research scientist at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. He’s also an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Denver.
Mark studies the cosmic web of galaxies and matter. Also the connections between structures and processes on earth and in space and field based interdisciplinary astronomy learning, all really fascinating things that we’ll talk about here. The way he puts it, he develops models to fit the confusing universe of data around us in our human brains to understand patterns and systems quantitatively, and even artistically.
So, I’m delighted to welcome Mark D. To the podcast. Thanks for joining us, Mark.
[00:01:10] Mark Neyrick: Oh, it’s wonderful to be here.
[00:01:12] Mike Simmons: Yeah, it’s great. So what cosmologists do is a little bit beyond most of us. And the physics and so on gets, um, out of control for us normal people that don’t have the abilities that you do, but you do some really interesting things that really brings cosmology down to earth in a way you combine, uh, astronomy or cosmology.
Artistically in particular doing origami, which is really hard to wrap your head around until you actually see something there. But this all has to do with the structures, the large scale scale structure of the universe. In the small scale structure that we see. So you have to explain this to me so that I can see where you’re getting at.
[00:02:12] Mark Neyrick: Well, first of all, well you said something about cosmologists having some kind of greater ability to, to understand this and I. Well, I think that’s not true. It’s it’s a lot of it is just experience and being around this stuff for for a while. But most people, I think, don’t have a very developed view of how The universe is arranged on very large scales, they, I think most people know that there’s a galaxy and that we’re a solar system inside the galaxy, but, and that there are other galaxies, but, uh, the fact that these galaxies outside our galaxy are arranged in a kind of orderly fashion, slightly orderly fashion is, Is probably not something that everyone realizes.
So the, that’s what the large scale structure of the universe refers to. It’s this, this cosmic web, uh, as it’s called of, of matter that go, that lies between galaxies in the universe.
[00:03:31] Mike Simmons: I see. And so how does that relate to things on earth that we’re used to seeing?
[00:03:37] Mark Neyrick: Well, so it’s, it’s a, It’s a, so there are a lot of things in nature that are branching structures as they’re called.
So an obvious thing that’s a branching structure is something with actual branches, a tree, but there are other, there are a lot of other things too. So I guess it could be useful to look at the slides about that.
So if you go down, yeah, so here, here are some trees, um, neurons. Are called, well, the word dendrite that describes the, these branching structures of these neuron cells, uh, dendrite means tree kind of, um, it’s, it comes from the same root. So it’s been known basically since, uh, Ramon y Cajal looked at these neurons under a microscope that The, the neurons in our brains have this branching structure, uh, which looks a little bit like a tree, so you can keep going.
So, yeah. Here’s, here’s a, a drawing by Leonard Leonardo da Vinci on on the left of a tree. He actually came up with a, a rule that seems, seems to be pretty accurate, that the sum of the, the thick thicknesses of a tree’s branch is, is equal to the thickness of the trunk they branched from. So it’s kind of like you start with, with a.
It’s kind of like if you’re extruding some, some Play Doh through a mesh, if you push that through there, it can branch into lots of little branches. But the, the whole cross section is remains sort of constant. Um, and some similar kinds of rules happen in some other systems, which I’ll, I’ll say a little bit more about that later, but, um, I’m not sure whether that applies to neurons, but, um, to the cosmic web, actually the, the, the spranching.
This rule that later Leonardo da Vinci found actually kind of works and works roughly, which is kind of interesting. So, so we can keep going through some other stuff. Here’s here’s some zebrafish neurons as, as the zebrafish is just starting to, to develop into an actual fish and you can keep going and mycelium.
That’s a, that’s a big, big one. The that’s really important in forests and. In, uh, in nature in general, but so this mycelial structure goes between between trees and plants and is a kind of nutrient exchange network that in many cases help ends up helping some plants develop. And it’s it’s also really important for for.
Soil’s absorbing carbon into the absorbing carbon. So this is relevant to climate change. Uh, mycelium was also mentioned in a recent star Trek series, star Trek, uh, discovery. They use what they call the mycelium network to travel around within the galaxy, which, uh, is so the, the, the cosmic web that I’m talking, going to be talking about and actually showing pictures of is.
It’s actually outside our galaxy. So you wouldn’t be able to use this cosmic web to travel within our galaxy. But, but it does end up looking quite a bit like this mycelium, mycelial network, which is cool. And here are some leaves. We can go on to, uh, also within our bodies. So this isn’t quite as visible, usually, but, but, uh, the circulatory system moves nutrients around.
So Our body and it’s it has a structure that’s optimal for doing that. It’s there’s a book called scale by Jeffrey West, which I recommend if you’re interested, if this is interesting to you. So the like a respiratory system, the lungs have a maximal surface area to maximize oxygen transport from the blood to the outside.
Um, also the circulatory system. Is a branching structure. You can kind of see that in blue here. Um, that’s also that’s part of the circuitry system. The it’s it’s it’s it’s sort of a fractal branching structure, which minimizes the amount of material necessary to to produce the structure. But it. It fans out and nourishes a, uh, the tissues kind of uniformly so you can go on to the next one.
And so the cosmic web, here’s a picture of, of a, well, on the right is a circulatory system of a person looking at a map and on the, on the left here is, is a. An example of the cosmic web in the universe, which happens to be colored red, which was an accident, but it looks kind of like, it looks similar. The, the, the capillaries and blood vessels of the universe transport matter around into galaxies.
And they originally came from a uniform, uh, arrangement. So it’s actually, uh, there’s a, A close analogy of gravity ends up kind of maximizing the the transport of the matter in the universe into galaxies, not as not as far as we know, through any kind of evolutionary process. But that ends up what happening.
That’s that ends up being what happens.
[00:10:02] Mike Simmons: Mm hmm. So it’s, nature finds the most efficient way of doing things eventually.
[00:10:08] Mark Neyrick: Yes.
[00:10:10] Mike Simmons: Mm
[00:10:11] Mark Neyrick: hmm. Yeah. So that happens with evolution, but even sometimes without evolution, it ends up working. Um, so here are some cities, uh, road networks. Here’s a map of, of some of the interstates highway in, of the U.
S. A top and on the bottom are, and this is from the book by Jeffrey West that I mentioned called scale on the bottom. There are kind of blood blood vessels of transportation of in the in and out of, of, uh, of Texas so that here the, they broadened the size of the road, according to the amount of traffic that that is either starts or ends within Texas.
So you can see that it’s, it’s kind of a. An organic looking blob where it’s where it’s thickest in the middle and then it has tendrils that branch out so you can keep going and also river networks. So, so this. So here is a bunch of watersheds as they’re called. These are each color. I’m hoping you’re not colorblind so you can see them.
Uh, each, each color here is, uh, is a watershed. So the big, the big pink one is the Mississippi watershed. So all of that, the, if rain falls on any of that pink area, it ends up going, well, it probably ends up evaporating or being used by, by something. If it were to flow all the way down to the sea, it would go through the Mississippi river.
Um, and then there are lots of littler ones. There’s the Colorado river, which is a yellow one right next to that. And then there are lots of other ones. Um, and those, those geometries also have a lot in common with these branching networks or they are branching networks. And, uh, and it’s probably the closest analogy in nature to the cosmic web, because in one case, the The cosmic web is gathering matter into galaxies.
So the, the galaxies end up being kind of at the end of one of these big rivers, like the Mississippi river. And, but in, on earth, on, in the terrestrial case, these watersheds are, well, they, they collect water and they, they also get deformed as they form because Because of erosion, so you end up with kind of a maximized flow through the through the network and that roughly happens in the cosmic case.
Also, so you can,
[00:13:04] Mike Simmons: yeah, what is the connection between all these? What is it makes these so similar? And in particular, the systems that we see on a really tiny scale by comparison, huge ones that we see on a cosmic scale.
[00:13:18] Mark Neyrick: Well, so I think that’s not entirely well, that’s something that I’m that is not entirely established.
Actually, there are some, uh, so it’s, it’s possible to say, okay, these look kind of similar, and you can measure quantities end up being similar. between the various networks. Um, so the, I would say in, in the evolutionary, in the biological case with, with circulatory systems in our body, it’s pretty clear that it’s, that What, what ends up that the structures are optimized to conserve some, to minimize some quantity because of evolution.
Um, you, you want, as I said, the, the total amount of material used to, To construct this circulatory system to be minimized, but still nourish the whole body, but the some other some other structures like the river networks. Uh, the structure just kind of happens. It’s not necessarily the result of a of a, an optimization that, uh, That you can really clearly point to, but there are, there are some ideas about that.
There’s a, there’s an idea called the constructal law, um, which is, was developed by, uh, an engineering professor named, uh, Adrian Bajon, which, which says that, uh, the, the, the structures or systems in nature tend to, tend to evolve to maximize flow through them. And that seems to be sort of what’s going on, but it’s, it’s not, it’s, it’s a little bit hard to completely prove that.
So, so that, that is a, that is kind of the idea, but it’s, but because of this, we have all these types of systems in the, in the world, in the universe that, uh, that, uh, At least I, having studied this for a while, whenever I look at a tree, I am reminded with, by lots of, lots of other things, like, that look kind of similar, and I, it adds to my appreciation of nature, and it’s useful actually in meditating for me.
And I think it’s, it’s, um, yeah, it’s, it’s really a powerful concept that all of these systems are happening on so many scales in the universe. And we’re kind of part of that.
[00:15:58] Mike Simmons: Yeah. So, okay. This brings us to the point where we want to see how this connects with the rest of us here on earth, aside from this being inspirational, really interesting.
Um, There are some connections and some educational things that are really cool. I’m going to present this one, introduce this through a very cool video.
[00:16:29] Video Overvoice: At Johns Hopkins university, astrophysicists are studying the distribution of matter in the cosmos. Mark Nyrink believes an origami model can help represent that distribution.
We can only observe visible matter. The material that forms stars, planets, and entire galaxies. But this is only part of our universe. There is also a mysterious substance called dark matter that’s invisible. Astrophysicists have detected it only indirectly. But many believe that it forms the hidden skeleton of our universe.
[00:17:19] Mark Neyrick: The dark matter started to accumulate into clumps. It’s almost immediately after the Big Bang, and we wouldn’t have as much structure as we see in the universe today if there hadn’t been this dark matter. The normal matter started to form structures based on the groundwork, the, the skeleton that the dark matter laid down right away.
So the dark matter is really the, the basis of understanding the structures that we see today. According
[00:17:46] Video Overvoice: to Nyrink, the unseen dark matter folds like origami. Gravity gathers and crumbles together the dark matter. The dark matter sheet in places where ordinary matter is drawn to form galaxies and stars.
Pleats in the sheet, called filaments, poke out from each galaxy, aligning its rotation with neighboring galaxies in a pattern similar to an origami twist fold.
[00:18:17] Mark Neyrick: In a twist fold, you have a small polygon, so let’s say a triangle. a triangle. So here we have a triangle. And going from the unfolded to the folded state entails twisting that triangle.
Even though this is a dark matter structure, it creates Uh, regular matter toward that. So the galaxy here would form here. It’s a strong approximation that the universe forms like an origami model. In particular, the way the various elements of the cosmic web are spinning are very explicit in this model.
We see in the universe that neighboring galaxies tend to be rotating in the same direction. And that actually relates to this origami model.
[00:19:12] Video Overvoice: NIRINC is now working with students to create a more complex model that captures how dark matter folds intersect to build the cosmic web.
The dots on the paper represent the galaxies as observed by telescopes. Whenever the paper is overlapping, there is an accumulation of dark matter, and therefore, a greater number of galaxies.
Astrophysics is now being enriched with a new vision of a folded universe, inspired by the ancient art of origami.
[00:19:56] Mike Simmons: Now we’re folding pieces of paper to see how the universe is constructed. Or So, vice versa. This is, I mean, this is a model. We’re not saying, you’re not saying that the, uh, universe is folding sheets like this with some, you know, this goes back to the stuff that people talk about. What if our solar system is an atom and we’re just part of some giant creature and, you know, people could go crazy with this stuff here.
[00:20:26] Mark Neyrick: Yeah, right.
[00:20:27] Mike Simmons: Yeah, so. How, this is, is this just a model for, uh, representing it, or is there some real physical connection in some way, such as sheets of dark matter?
[00:20:44] Mark Neyrick: There, there is really We think of, uh, uh, a dark matter sheet that has folded, not, so the, the, the approximation that this is very much like an origami sheet that doesn’t stretch at all, for instance, that is, is wrong.
The, the street, the sheet does stretch and it doesn’t form the, The angular structures that that origami does it’s they’re rounded off and but but there is a real physical meaning behind this this folding process. It, uh, it’s sort of like so in three dimensions. It’s a, a kind of a block. You can imagine it as this kind of a block of.
Jello that is moving around in some places and where, where two block, two patches of it pass through each other, that it has to form what happens in two dimensions as a, a, a pleat. So it’s kind of like if you take two, take a sheet of paper and push, push it together, uh, it folds and you can form a pleat there, but in the same kind of thing.
Can happen in three dimensions. It folds actually, and this is not useful to think about directly, but it folds in six dimensions. Um, but so, but that’s not useful. It’s the, the main point of it is that different patches can slide around and, and be on top of each other.
[00:22:32] Mike Simmons: So there are two uses for this that I can think of.
One is to understand. Mm hmm. Cosmology and what’s going on there with this as a model. And the other is education. I mean, this is artwork that you are doing and so it’s
[00:22:49] Mark Neyrick: a, and it’s actually tactile learning in some ways. Uh, I mean, it is, it is tactile, the tactilization, um, not just visualization, but you’re actually doing stuff with your hands, which is, which is, I think, pretty cool.
[00:23:10] Mike Simmons: And, uh, here we have an outreach event where you’re actually doing this with some students.
[00:23:18] Mark Neyrick: Um, yeah, this was a public, well, uh, at the upper right there is, it was at this, an outreach event at this really cool place called science, science gallery, London, it’s, uh, there there’s this network of science galleries.
Uh, there are about 10 of them in the world. And this was a workshop where people were, were making a design, uh, Using this tool fabric, so this is an actual fabric, and it’s the actually the, it’s a closer representation of what’s going on in some ways than the strict paper folding, which generates very angular thing.
This is, in this case, you, what, what they did is, is gather together a patch of the fabric into one of these blobs and then put a little rubber band around them. And it ends up. Forming these plates between the, the blobs, uh, for a different reason than, than happens in the universe, but it ends up looking pretty similar.
And it’s, uh, it ends up being a pretty good representation of what’s going on. So
[00:24:42] Mike Simmons: this is, this is an interesting way of doing astronomy education that I’ve never seen before. Uh, is this. Is this more intuitive than, uh, than the other ways of doing this for the students? Do you find great success with this?
[00:25:05] Mark Neyrick: Um, yeah, and actually even, so yeah, the, the concept of the cosmic web is, can be kind of abstract. It’s easy to show pictures of it. So that gives some appreciation, but I think most people wouldn’t necessarily remember a picture they saw of the cosmic web for a long time, but they actually would remember that they, They played around with this, this fabric and, and made a design is, it really is a more powerful thing.
And actually, even with professional astrophysicists, I brought a, a, an activity with. An origami activity where the, to a conference once, and, uh, passed out these little pieces of paper that the, that the, the researchers folded. And the, it was, I think the only time that we were that nobody was checking their email during the conference.
They were actually quite engaged and remembered that. So it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s for everyone. It’s it’s, um, it makes it a lot more human.
[00:26:25] Mike Simmons: Do you see this as, as something that might be useful in other areas as well? I mean, uh, astronomy educators use all kinds of different tools. Yeah. Or different things. Uh, is this something that might be useful in other areas?
[00:26:41] Mark Neyrick: Well, yeah, well, in general, uh, tactile sort of learning is, can be useful. But I think that in this case, there’s an unusual physical angle to it, which may not entirely get across to, to everyone who plays around with it, but it’s, it’s something to add to it. Um, but in, yeah, I think. Pretty much any time there’s a Uh, hands on learning activity that’s useful, not just useful, but it’s more, it’s more enjoyable and memorable.
[00:27:22] Mike Simmons: This is something, um, you know, in, in doing, I mean, adding some other way of perceiving these things is always helpful. Tactile models, sound, sometimes different ways of representing. Um, and we do astronomy with the blind who, Uh, who have tactile models and sonification, uh, taking, uh, basically graphs otherwise and, and converting that into sound so they can hear what’s going on.
Um, this would be, this is something that people should be doing. There are a lot of resources for astronomy, um, for the blind, but this is ideal. I mean, this is better for sighted people too. Thank you. But it’s the ultimate because I don’t know, uh, I can’t imagine that those who were not able to see things like the, the slides that we showed earlier would have a much easier time understanding what’s going on with this kind of a model is you ever considered that or know anything about that?
[00:28:31] Mark Neyrick: Oh, well, yeah, I mean, uh,
Yeah, definitely. It’s, um, I mean, I suppose a blend, so, so part of part of this activity and actually maybe you could show the, uh, the, the slide of the council of giants.
[00:28:51] Mike Simmons: Yeah.
[00:28:52] Mark Neyrick: So, um, so currently usually the, the participants are trying to. Replicate the structure using the fabric. I don’t know if you remember what that what that looked like, but it probably it has some similarities to this structure, the faint lines between the galaxies here.
So I should say first what this is, um, the, uh, so the Milky Way is in the middle there. You can see you are here. Arrow. Um, and they’re all there. The nearest galaxies around us. happen to be in a flat arrangement, which is kind of actually unusual in our universe that a galaxy as big as the Milky Way would have the flat arrangement of other galaxies around us.
So this isn’t just a projection. If you look at it from the side, it’s almost flat. Um, and That’s actually, it’s something that astronomers don’t really know. Where the, the filaments of matter are between these galaxies. And so actually when, when the, in this activity, the, the participants get to make a guess about effectively of where the, the gala, where the, the filaments are in our nearby universe.
Um, each time they assemble this thing that looks like the council of giants. So the, the cons of giants is actually the ring of galaxies around the Milky Way. Um, and the whole structure is called the local sheet. Um, so I’m not answering the original question, which is, which was about, uh, uh, sight impaired people, visually impaired people.
Um, the, so I, I suppose. Um, currently, they, the way this activity works is by looking at it is looking at a picture and trying to replicate that. But also, there are some physical models I’ve made of of this council of giants that they could they could look at also, which, which would help to, well, they could approach it from that way entirely without.
So yeah, that’s, it’s important to, to help people, uh, who aren’t able to use their vision to understand things as much.
[00:31:20] Mike Simmons: Now, what about the other way? This sounds like a stretch to me, but can you learn something from looking at the structure, looking at the places where the galaxies are? And folding the fabric to match the observations and actually learn something about the network of filaments and so on.
Yes,
[00:31:43] Mark Neyrick: yep. Yeah, no, that, that’s what I, that’s kind of what I was trying to say that the way the places where the plates develop in this, in the thing that was on the screen before. is effectively a, uh, a guess of where the, the filaments are. And actually you can go on to the next slide, which, which shows an experiment I made using a slime mold.
So, um, this is kind of a, a slime mold. It’s, I called this a Cosmoldogist. Well, so the, the, um, so the, the slime mold, I don’t, Some people might not be super familiar with slime mold, but it’s this yellow thing that, um, that is actually all one cell. This, all this yellow stuff is one cell that started out at the yellow, sorry, at the white rectangle in the middle, which I put where the Milky Way is.
And, um, I put, um, I put flakes of oat, um, at the locations of all the other galaxies. And slime mold likes to make a network of connections between the food source, which is the oat flakes. And so, and there’s been some work about, uh, demonstrating that the, that the, A slime mold tends to, can find a, a nearly optimal, uh, or shortest path between all of these, these points.
So, for example, it looks, um, they, they put, uh, the locations of Tokyo, Metro stations in a petri dish like this. And the slime mold was able to, to roughly find where the, where the train should go between that, that’s make an optimal network. But so, um, so this is, this is the slime mold to guess about where the.
where the filaments are in the local universe. Um, and you can go one more slide down. Um, so the, here are four different slime molds, uh, guesses in different colors, um, about where the, these networks are. They don’t actually agree super well, but there are places, places where they agree pretty well, which is, uh, for like in the, at the bottom right, There’s a bunch of stuff typically there, which indicates that kind of that there’s a most there’s At least in the pinning of the slime molds, there’s probably a filament between those two galaxies, which are, um, which are the Milky Way and the nearest galaxy, which is kind of the only galaxy that’s, the only large galaxy that’s, uh, visible with the naked eye, which is Andromeda.
So,
[00:34:39] Mike Simmons: so really, um, but the universe is made out of slime mold. Is that what you’re saying?
[00:34:45] Mark Neyrick: Pretty much.
[00:34:49] Mike Simmons: Well, that explains a lot. That’s fabulous. Well, so how much of this outreach do you do and do you do this, um, You know, with your students at the university and so on.
[00:35:03] Mark Neyrick: Um, yeah, so I’ve, I’ve, it’s, it’s been a part of every class that I’ve taught recently and I’m, uh, so in, in Colorado, um, I’m actually not sure how common this is, but yeah, here’s, um, there may be other universities in other states that have these kinds of, uh, kinds of campuses, but a lot, uh, at least most of them.
The major universities here have, have these mountain campuses. So here’s a picture of, well, drawn from, uh, Colorado state universities, mountain camp campus. Um, there are some pictures on the left of, of the campus. And then on the right is a picture I took of a, of a tree and some other trees. Um, so, so, um, I’m really excited that I’ll be able to, I think, in a class that I’m teaching next quarter, um, bring the class up to the University of Denver Mountain Campus, uh, which, which I’m going to visit this weekend.
Um, and. And I’ll point out systems there that are, that have some relation to, to systems in astronomy. So this cosmic web, for example, is the prime, prime example, just a tree has some similarities to the cosmic web, but also all of these seem to be next to rivers just for practical reasons, because rivers simplify the terrain and the mountains.
Um, but the, the river, We’ll have some characteristics that will be really fun to, to relate to the cosmic web. Also, there’s a river model of black holes, which I, we haven’t talked about black holes yet, but there’s a way to understand how black holes work, which, which make reference to a river. And I’m thinking of, I’ll just briefly say that the, This way of understanding how a black hole works involves thinking of space kind of falling into the black hole, into a, into a drain, um, or over a waterfall.
Um, and it, there’s a pretty strong analogy there too. So, um, that’s going to be another thing that’ll be really fun to, To look at,
[00:37:36] Mike Simmons: so there’s a lot more to develop in terms of these connections and published on this, I think too.
[00:37:45] Mark Neyrick: Yeah. Like the, uh, there’s a connection to structural engineering and, and spider webs that I wrote a whole paper about.
Um, the, uh, that actually came from an art, some art that I saw, um, there, there’s an artist named Tomas Araceno who makes these installations, room size installations of, of black cables. Oh yeah. Um, so this is, um, this is a, actually a real spider web that spiders made in his studio. Um, and then I guess the next side probably has, Oh, maybe it’s the previous one.
Oh, maybe not. Well, anyway, the, A structure very much like that, um, he scanned it in great detail and built this structure and occupied most of the room and you can walk around there and pluck the strings even. Um, and, uh, well, this, this geometry is, uh, comes from structural, from, uh, structural engineering in some ways.
And it happens that a very, oh, there you go. Um, that the same kind of structure falls out naturally from the way, uh, that this cosmic web develops. Um, it’s, it’s described by the same geometry. So that’s, um, so that was really cool. Um, I, I don’t imagine bringing one of these huge sculptures around, uh, in the mountains, but there are spider webs in the, in the mountains sometimes, which would be cool to point out, uh, their relation to the cosmos.
So, so yeah, I guess I’m, um, I’m, I’m really excited about, Uh, teaching in this setting, uh, because, well, it’ll form connections to among all these systems, but, um, I think, yeah, even more so than learning particular facts and concepts is the appreciation that these, these, these processes are happening. Around us that are, uh, that are very, pretty easy to just to watch and, uh, kind of makes me feel part of the cosmos more to know that, that the, the, these things are kind of happening on unimaginably, unimaginably vast scales also, and, but any, and I can kind of see it in front of me too.
[00:40:33] Mike Simmons: So from microscopic to. Macroscopic, uh, everything through nature. This is amazing. And, and, you know, I’ve done a lot of work with artists who are doing astronomy and art, different ways of representing the same things. But in this case, the artwork is. is the thing itself. It’s not just a representation that those spiderwebs, that’s the web that is the cosmic web or something.
I mean, they’re essentially the same thing. So this is really Um, I, I, it’s just, you know, when you say, uh, um, what is it, uh, life imitates art or, or is it art imitates life? Well, here it’s art equals life. Uhhuh, ,
[00:41:28] Mark Neyrick: the nature. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:41:29] Mike Simmons: Yeah. It’s quite amazing. I, I hope that, are you working with others who are going to bring this into their courses and so on as well?
[00:41:37] Mark Neyrick: Um, yeah, so, well I’ve, I’ve, the reason that the Colorado State University. Slide was there was that’s where I’ve kind of already done this. It was actually in an art class. Um, and this artist named Erica Osborne, the Colorado State University, who, who, who taught a, uh, a two week intensive art class at this.
at this mountain campus, emphasizing all the systems going on in the, in the forest. And so the, the cosmic connection fit pretty well into that. And, and I was, that was a lot of fun to be included in that a little bit. Um, and Uh, yeah. So I’m looking forward to doing that wherever I can.
[00:42:30] Mike Simmons: and this mark is this, this is one of those things where somebody comes along and just sees something that everybody else has been looking at, but sees something within it that people have been looking at for a really long time.
And that was you in this case?
[00:42:49] Mark Neyrick: Well, uh, yeah, I suppose so. The, the connection to the cosmos is probably, is relatively new. Yeah. . Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess we haven’t really known about this cosmic web for very long and human term, human terms. It’s really only since the, um, the 80s or 90s, since we’ve known about this, the structure that, um, that, um, The, the galaxies in the universe make, um, uh, some, so some other, well, some other cosmologists have had some similar ideas, but I think I’m pushing it and I’m realizing how useful, how inspiring it is to non cosmologists maybe more than others have.
[00:43:40] Mike Simmons: Yeah. Yeah. This is fascinating. Well, I’ll tell you one thing I’ve known about the cosmic web and I look at the pictures and I say, What the heck is going on there? I never really looked into it and understood it, but this makes. This really makes a lot more sense to me. I’m far from a student. Uh, I don’t have trouble picking things up, but this, watching this is actually more interesting to me and, um, really drove it home.
I, and I’m going to look into more of it now, and that’s really. You know, we use astronomy for so many things, inspiring people to, to go into science or inspiring their curiosity or imagination. Um, this works because it worked on me. So I, I know this is an important thing. I hope this gets out there much more.
[00:44:30] Mark Neyrick: Yeah. Well, I’ll also, I’ll, I think an essential part of it is maybe the most important part of it is, um, Is community is communicating that although there’s some things that seem mysterious and maybe are still someone mysterious. A lot of it can be understood. Um, the, the world is largely understandable.
[00:44:58] Mike Simmons: It’s not,
[00:44:59] Mark Neyrick: it’s not some magic happening and there’s just vague where the galaxies are. We actually understand these things and, and there are good reasons for them and they’re related to other things that we can observe directly.
[00:45:11] Mike Simmons: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the thing too, is that, um, when we look at images from, uh, Hubble or James West or something, those are things that are out there.
It’s somewhere else. It’s not connected. to us. But then when you go out under the night sky and you look up and you see the Andromeda Galaxy, or the Orion Nebula, or you see Saturn or something, that’s right there. This connects us, connects these things to us. And knowing that these structures are common And nature and very small scales, larger scales.
And I look outside, see a tree. There are some connections with that. That kind of brings it home that this is not elsewhere. This is here. This is what we are a part of. We’re used to seeing things microscopic and we’re used to seeing them bigger. This is just all part of a progression, all part of the same thing.
So I, I find it really fascinating and I hope others do too. I hope there will be more and we have to let people know how to, uh, get a hold of you. Uh, I think we have some information to share. There you are on Instagram. What else have we got? There’s website, origami website. Yeah. Uh,
[00:46:36] Mark Neyrick: and that’s, that’s actually the same website, but yeah, I had to grab the.si uh, do science domain name when it became available.
[00:46:43] Mike Simmons: Right, right. And we’ll be people be able to find you, uh, contact for you if they want to there. Okay. If you’re willing to be contacted by lots of. Okay. That’s terrific. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Mark. Uh, it’s, I I’ve known about your work. It’s wonderful to dig into it farther and really understand.
What you’re doing with these folding paper and in cosmology and all that stuff, because it’s just, uh, it’s wonderful. And I, I think it’s useful.
[00:47:18] Mark Neyrick: Yeah. Well, and also, well, of course, I think astronomy for equity is wonderful. David’s not, I, you don’t have to, of course, convince me that astronomy is powerful for getting in contact with the world and education and Well,
[00:47:38] Mike Simmons: thank you very much.
We’re going to show people that.
[00:47:42] Mark Neyrick: Wonderful.
[00:47:43] Mike Simmons: Thanks a lot.
[00:47:45] Mark Neyrick: Thank you.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Planetary Science Institute. Audio post production by me, Richard Drumm, project management by Avivah Yamani, and hosting donated by libsyn.com. This content is released under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Please share what you love but don’t sell what’s free.
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