The cosmic spiderweb: equivalence of cosmic, architectural, and origami tessellations

TL;DR

This paper reveals a deep mathematical and physical connection between the cosmic web, architectural spiderwebs, and origami tessellations, suggesting new ways to test cosmological models and understand large-scale structure formation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the cosmic web can be modeled as a tensioned spiderweb structure within the adhesion model, unifying concepts across cosmology, engineering, and origami.

Findings

Cosmic web threads form tensioned spiderwebs in the adhesion model.

Exact correspondence when including void nodes and excluding collapsed regions.

Potential to test cosmological anisotropy and flows using these structural insights.

Abstract

For over twenty years, the term 'cosmic web' has guided our understanding of the large-scale arrangement of matter in the cosmos, accurately evoking the concept of a network of galaxies linked by filaments. But the physical correspondence between the cosmic web and structural-engineering or textile 'spiderwebs' is even deeper than previously known, and extends to origami tessellations as well. Here we explain that in a good structure-formation approximation known as the adhesion model, threads of the cosmic web form a spiderweb, i.e. can be strung up to be entirely in tension. The correspondence is exact if nodes sampling voids are included, and if structure is excluded within collapsed regions (walls, filaments and haloes), where dark-matter multistreaming and baryonic physics affect the structure. We also suggest how concepts arising from this link might be used to test cosmological models: for example, to test for large-scale anisotropy and rotational flows in the cosmos.