The structure of the universe and the laws that govern its
growth may be more similar than previously thought to the structure and growth
of the human brain and other complex networks, such as the Internet or a social
network of trust relationships between people, according to a new paper
published in the science journal Nature’s Scientific Reports.
“By no means do we claim that the universe is a global brain
or a computer,” said Dmitri Krioukov, co-author of the paper, published by the
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), based at the San
Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego.
“But the discovered equivalence between the growth of the universe and complex
networks strongly suggests that unexpectedly similar laws govern the dynamics
of these very different complex systems.”