Human brain and the universe

Scientists found many similarities between two of the most complex of the existing systems – the human brain and the universe. The human brain has about 70 billion neurons, while there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe. In both of them, roughly 30 percent of mass are long filaments and nodes that compose the network or the web. Other 70 percent seem to be “passive”: brain’s water and dark matter in the case of the universe. They also both have similar spectral density.

Colliding neutron stars generate radioactive elements that may be “partially responsible for the plate tectonics and protective magnetic fields on Earth-like rocky planets”, as we read in Scientific American. Radioactive elements within a planet may be strongly tied to its habitability as it heats the inside of it. Such a significant source of geophysical warmth is probably essential for the existence of magnetic field and plate tectonics – both of them are central in the creation of life, at least on Earth.

A few grains of soil from the Ryugu asteroid will soon come to Earth as a result of the six-year mission of the Japanese Hayabusa 2 probe. It may help to answer the question of where water on our planet came from: whether it originated here or was brought by an asteroid that could have hit our planet billions of years ago. Scientists from Glasgow University will use an atom probe to identify individual atoms in a sample, once it safely arrives on Earth.