An article in yesterday’s Sunday Times announces: “Scientists find cosmic glue”, with the sub-heading: “Astronomers now think that threads of dark matter may be all that hold the universe together.”

The basic argument is: “The old idea of billions of galaxies floating in space with nothing but a void between them is being replaced by something much more complex, where galaxies form within filaments of dark matter that link them together in a vast cosmic ‘spider’s web’.”

Just speculating!...

Just remember quantum mechanics, spooky action at a distance, per Einstein. A pair of split sister particles keep track of each other across the universe instantaneously.

An article in yesterday’s Sunday Times announces: “Scientists find cosmic glue”, with the sub-heading: “Astronomers now think that threads of dark matter may be all that hold the universe together.”

Here are more stories on the findings. the above comment is kind of silly journalese to make readers buy into the story. How about gravity for starters?

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-clearest-picture-dark-energy.html

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-astronomers-universe-dark-unprecedented-scale.html

An article in yesterday’s Sunday Times announces: “Scientists find cosmic glue”, with the sub-heading: “Astronomers now think that threads of dark matter may be all that hold the universe together.”

The basic argument is: “The old idea of billions of galaxies floating in space with nothing but a void between them is being replaced by something much more complex, where galaxies form within filaments of dark matter that link them together in a vast cosmic ‘spider’s web’.”

This isn't entirely true: The Higgs-Field is literally an invisible quantum pertubation that fills all "voids." There is no void in the cosmos. Not in any physical sense. Space is not "empty."

...

There’s nothing new in the idea that the universe too might be a superorganism, but a superorganism has to be connected up, which is why this new theory of linking filaments gives us food for thought. The cosmic “cells” also undergo a continual process of death and renewal – over a vastly different time scale from ours, of course – but the universe continues to function in the mode that some folk call “fine tuning”. Dark matter might be the cosmic equivalent of the nanowires, while the unidentified “intelligence” that directs the bacteria and indeed all other living creatures, including ourselves, might also be the force that operates the interlinked universe. Eventually we die, and eventually – again over a vastly different time scale – maybe our own part of the universe will die, or the whole of our universe will die, but in the meantime, might not the microcosm be in the image of the macrocosm? Just speculating!...

But if we're all part of this universe... do we really truly "die?" I know its not what your point was. But if all things are linked in this vast cosmic network of dark-matter filaments... and the universe is all that is, and we're a part of it...

Then how do we ever truly "leave?" I'm not talking in the sense of a "soul" but that everything that makes me, me... doesn't really disappear. It just radically changes form.

As to your larger question, yes, usually patterns in nature seem to repeat. What's a little trickier... what constitutes a cosmic "cell?"

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"