{"id":851,"date":"2020-04-01T13:41:51","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T11:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/?p=851"},"modified":"2020-04-01T13:41:51","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T11:41:51","slug":"the-cosmic-web-and-a-slime-mold-network-patterns-across-scales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/2020\/04\/the-cosmic-web-and-a-slime-mold-network-patterns-across-scales\/","title":{"rendered":"The cosmic web and a slime mold: network patterns across scales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is there a relation between a yellow slime organism called <em>Physarum polycephalum, <\/em>that \u00a0can be easily found on decaying trees and leaves in the forest&#8217;s shade, and the complex organization of galaxies?<\/p>\n<p>Researchers Joe Burchett and Oskar Elek at the University of California at Santa Cruz created a 3D algorithm that represents how the slime builds its networked structures in space. Then, they applied the algorithm to a dataset of 37.000 galaxies, finding a rather precise representation of the cosmic web. In the words of one of the authors:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was kind of a Eureka moment, and I became convinced that the slime mold model was the way forward for us,\u201d Burchett said. \u201cIt\u2019s somewhat coincidental that it works, but not entirely. A slime mold creates an optimized transport network, finding the most efficient pathways to connect food sources. In the cosmic web, the growth of structure produces networks that are also, in a sense, optimal. The underlying processes are different, but they produce mathematical structures that are analogous.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is an interesting step towards understanding the laws of complexity and how they create similar structures across scales. Read the full contribution <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ucsc.edu\/2020\/03\/cosmic-web.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is there a relation between a yellow slime organism called Physarum polycephalum, that \u00a0can be easily found on decaying trees and leaves in the forest&#8217;s shade, and the complex organization of galaxies? Researchers Joe Burchett and Oskar Elek at the University of California at Santa Cruz created a 3D algorithm that represents how the slime [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001625,"featured_media":852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21718,37816,21721,34869],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-graph-analysis","8":"category-networks","9":"category-science","10":"category-simulation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/citadyne-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}