Similarities Between Complex Network of Brain and the Universe are Much Deeper than Ever Imagined

The universe offers us, humans, with vast myriad possibilities and with its mysterious space bodies, we can visualise some of the most relatable objects as well. Taking this casual game of spotting everyday objects in space, an astrophysicist and a neurosurgeon have come together and used quantitative analysis to compare two of the most complex systems in nature – the human brain and the galaxies in the Universe. The study stems from an image that occasionally gets shared around, showing a human neuron and a simulated galaxy cluster and how they look startlingly similar. The two scientists have predicted that the void-filament boundary is one of the most complex volumes of the universe in terms of measurement by the number of bits of information it takes to describe it. In terms of similarities, the human cerebellum has around 69 billion neurons while the observable cosmic web contains over 100 billion galaxies.