Evolutionary Principles of the Structure of the Universe

Leonid Grinin:

"The Structure of the Universe in the Past and Present

Evolutionary principles of the structure of the Universe.

Thus, the formation of the large-scale structure of the Universe has not occurred at once. Formation of galaxies and their clusters, probably, was the process which had lasted for billions years.

There are several evolutionary principles in the characteristics of the structure of the Universe which are well traced at all levels of evolution. But we will consider only two of them.

1. The combination of antagonistic features. In the structure of the Universe one can find the combination of uniformity and non-uniformity. The uniformity is already manifested at the inflation phase, when the Universe started inflating evenly in all dimensions. The uniformity has preserved till present, but only at the largest scale (of an order of magnitude of 100 megaparsecs). For reference, the size of the largest galaxy clusters (such as our Local Group with the center in the Virgo constellation) is 40 megaparsecs at most (Gorbunov and Rubakov 2011). The non-uniformity of the Universe is manifested at scales smaller than 100 megaparsecs; and the smaller is the scale, the more salient is the non-uniformity. The combination of antagonistic features is a phenomenon that is rather characteristic for many other evolutionary levels. Thus, the antagonistic features of ‘even surface’ and ‘uneven surface’ are quite applicable to the Earth surface: at bird's eye it looks even.

2. Density and sparsity can be traced everywhere, starting from the atomic structure, where the mass is concentrated in a tiny nucleus, while most of the atom is an empty space. There is a huge non-uniformity between the scale of the Universe and the space that the main mass of (at least, baryonic) matter occupies within it. At the present stage of evolution of the Universe its matter is concentrated, first of all, in stars which actually occupy only a 10–25 part of the total volume of the Universe (not taking into account the galaxy nuclei [Pavlov 2011: 43]). Were there such proportions in ancient Universe? Maybe, not. Therefore, the concentration of the matter is strengthening. Not only the hard matter is distributed very unevenly throughout the Universe; the same is true of the gas. Much of this gas is concentrated in giant molecular clouds which are of many thousands of solar masses (Lipunov 2008: 37). At the same time the difference in density is fractal, which is especially evident in the zones of high density. The factors contributing to such unevenness are not always clear; for example, it is not clear, what the uneven distribution of masses during the formation of galaxies (Weinberg 1975: 608) as well as many other processes of distribution, concentration and dissipation are connected with. But the principles of uneven distribution of the matter mass at different evolutionary levels are rather similar. For example, at present the main mass of the Earth's population is concentrated in a rather small territory in comparison with the total territory where life on the Earth is possible."

(https://www.sociostudies.org/almanac/articles/cosmic_evolution_and_universal_evolutionary_principles)