Is this really that surprising? I thought that the CMB distribution of matter displays a proto-structure that matches with what we observe today, meaning the large scale structure and congruent behavior we observe is just the result of the initial distribution and motion of matter in the early universe, rather than some mysterious force or effect we have yet to explain.
Or, it doesn't require mysterious force or effect - it could just be an emergent property of how matter interacts. For instance, basic rules of atomic forces lead to complex behavior in the aggregate, such as life, foam, planets, etc. Not sure why this wouldn't apply to universal size structure as well.
Right, but those forces and effects drop off with distance. The alignments we're observing are many, many, many orders of magnitude too far dispersed to be explainable by known forces.
It would be like finding a few dozen planets floating in interstellar space hundreds of lightyears away, much further away than the nearest stars, but on analysis finding that they all happen to be rotating around our sun even though our sun's gravity is utterly overwhelmed by the gravity of other objects much closer to them.
The same is true of a skin cell in your foot vs in your ear. You'd find remarkable similarity even though there is no apparent reason they would be similar until you comprehend the superstructure.
The idea is that the similarities across vast amounts of space would not be due to first order effects from forces, but rather much more complex and subtle interactions over time that happen to have structure rather than being purely random, just as life emerged from seemingly random interactions in primordial pools.
Well of course it seems likely some form of interaction at some point in the past or present is behind these effects, we just don’t know what it was or is. If that’s all your saying, sure.
so, kind of like a "cosmic inertia"? that would explain it. although I find this problematic explanation in the sense, every force in the universe stems from a shared origin all the way down to big bang. how do we draw the line between what is emergent and what is inherent? inherent being the cosmic inertia.
edit: come to think of it, nothing is inherent about the universe except for anything before the big bang; and there we go into the realm of quantum foam, string theory, if I am not mistaken.
