On the Fractal Dimension of the Visible Universe
Astrophysics
2007-05-23 v1
Abstract
Estimates of the fractal dimension of the set of galaxies in the universe, based on ever improving data sets, tend to settle on . This result raised a raging debate due to its glaring contradiction with astrophysical models that expect a homogeneous universe. A recent mathematical result indicates that there is no contradiction, since measurements of the dimension of the {\em visible} subset of galaxies is bounded from above by D=2 even if the true dimension is anything between D=2 and D=3. We demonstrate this result in the context of a simple fractal model, and explain how to proceed in order to find a better estimate of the true dimension of the set of galaxies.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0301034,
title = {On the Fractal Dimension of the Visible Universe},
author = {Jean-Pierre Eckmann and Esa Järvenpää and Maarit Järvenpää and Itamar Procaccia},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0301034},
year = {2007}
}