Archive of Writings

Throughout math and physics certain trends occur over and over. The unique numbers of pi and phi (the golden ratio) respectively define circles and spirals. The mathematical forms of the equations for gravitational force and electric force are the same, and the physical forms of fractals get bigger without changing shape. Now, a pair of astronomers, Bruno Binggeli and Tatjana Hascher of the University of Basel, are searching for a universal mass function that describes the ratios of little stars to big stars as well as the ratios of groups of galaxies to clusters of galaxies. According to a review paper accepted for publication in the PASP “the mass functions of individual object classes, when properly normalized, can indeed be concatenated to build a surprisingly continuous mass function of the universe.” From 100-meter-size asteroids (10^-20 Solar masses), to the most massive of galaxy clusters (10^16 solar masses), and across 36 orders of magnitude in mass, they find (roughly) the same relationship. Put simply, the same mathematical form, an inverse square function, describes how there are more red dwarf stars than blue super giants, and why there are more galaxy groups, like Seygert’s Sextet, than galaxy superclusters like Virgo.