Mark Neyrinck
Interview by Mia Cardenas, Colloquium Manager
Interview by Mia Cardenas, Colloquium Manager
Mark Neyrinck
Mark Neyrinck is an Ikerbasque Fellow at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao. Exploring the intersection between math, astrophysics and paper-folding, he developed "cosmic web origami" as a research scientist at John Hopkins University. In this Colloquium interview, we learn more about his work and background as a scientist working with art.
Mia Cardenas: What was your call to action in becoming an astrophysicist?
Mark Neyrinck: My passions as a child were largely creative: writing, and music. But the grace and immutability of the cosmos have always entranced me too; Carl Sagan’s Cosmos had quite an impact on me. I’m grateful to have found a way to pursue creativity and science together. Fortunately, my field, the study of the cosmic web, is particularly visual. Tree and (cosmic-)weblike structures have been a lifelong interest, too, with a SciArt history going back through Da Vinci.
MC: What are the major obstacles you encounter in your day to day work?
MN: Too many things to do! Art helps; I tend to work most efficiently when there is some artistic aspect to what I am doing!
Mark Neyrinck: My passions as a child were largely creative: writing, and music. But the grace and immutability of the cosmos have always entranced me too; Carl Sagan’s Cosmos had quite an impact on me. I’m grateful to have found a way to pursue creativity and science together. Fortunately, my field, the study of the cosmic web, is particularly visual. Tree and (cosmic-)weblike structures have been a lifelong interest, too, with a SciArt history going back through Da Vinci.
MC: What are the major obstacles you encounter in your day to day work?
MN: Too many things to do! Art helps; I tend to work most efficiently when there is some artistic aspect to what I am doing!
A folded-up 2D dark-matter universe, with a couple of galaxy clusters and several other filaments of galaxies. Image Credit: M Neyrinck, S Colombi & A Sobolevski. Simulation performed with ColDICE (Sousbie & Colombi 2016, JCP 321, 644; www.vlasix.org)
Figure 1: An Origami Cosmic Web, by Mark Neyrinck, folded by students in an Origami Mathematics & Cosmology course. On display in the Johns Hopkins physics department. It represents filaments and clusters in the VIPERS galaxy redshift survey. Photo by Ben Andrew
MC: You've begun to integrate art into your career as a physicist with your cosmic origami, The SciArt Bridge residency, and most recently, in your collaboration with Anastasia Victor. What have been the most gratifying outcomes of integrating art with your scientific work?
MN: Sometimes, science is presented as independent of humans. Or the culture of science can focus overly on “great” scientists, and arguments between them. But seeing science more honestly and humanly, with an artist’s eye, helps to engage people, and demystify both science and art. I see SciArt as a modest contribution in the struggle for science in society, so important now. I do cosmic origami workshops, mainly for that reason.
Art can help advance science, too! Origami ultimately led to our recent paper “Intergalactic Filaments Spin,” covered in New Scientist here. How? In paper origami, the simplest way to collect paper into a blob is called a twist fold (an origami node in Fig 1), with pleats. A galaxy is a 3D version of this. In a toy model, space “folds up” into a galaxy, with a few triangular prisms (Toblerones, representing filaments) poking out. Since we observe galaxies spinning, that suggests that filaments spin, too.
Our virtual reality project (with artist Anastasia Victor, neuroscientist Michael Silver, cosmologist Miguel Aragón Calvo, curated by Esther Mallouh) also led to new science. The VR participant guides the growth of a neuron/cosmic web around them (Fig 2). We used a dendrite- simulating minimal-spanning-tree algorithm used in neuroscience, and found that filaments around clusters in the cosmic web are well-described by this too! We’re trying to figure out why.
Also, mandala-like crease patterns emerge from unwrapping the dark matter that has formed simulated galaxies (Fig 3). Kaitlyn Sterlace, with Exist Vibrantly Art, was inspired by an image from another simulated galaxy to make Fig 4 recently, with her rich understanding of mandalas. I’ve really grown to appreciate contemplative and sacred geometry through this collaboration.
Fig 4: Unfolded, graphite & ink illustration with metallic accents, by Kaitlyn Sterlace with Exist Vibrantly Art. Based on the inner crease structure of a forming and folding simulated galaxy.
Figure 3: A simulation visualization showing (right) how the dark matter in a 2D universe with galaxies arranged in a Cairo pentagonal tessellation would look, and (left) the creases if that dark matter were unfolded.
|
Figure 2: A neurocosmic branching structure guided by a virtual reality participant, in One in the Universe, a VR experience in collaboration with Anastasia Victor, Miguel AragoĢn-Calvo, and Michael Silver. Photo by Wendy Leyden
|
MC: You've expressed your interest in "finding cool ways to explain cool science." Are there any other "cool scientific concepts" you're interested in exploring artistically in the future?
MN: I’m really excited about our finding that cosmic filaments rotate! I’d love to build a network of interlinked rotating filaments, arranged like the real cosmic web in the Universe.
MC: Who are your favorite Sci-Artists or Scientists? Why?
MN: (Sci-)Artist Tomas Saraceno has influenced me quite a bit with his wonderful work, some of which suggests that spiderwebs relate to the cosmic web. It encouraged me to investigate and even verify that connection! That link came through the work of another favorite, origamist and former physicist Robert Lang, unifying origami tessellations and architectural spiderwebs. This even goes back to the structural-engineering work by the unifier of electromagnetism, James Clerk Maxwell.
Four Cosmoldogists, by Mark Neyrinck. Four slime-mold cosmologists,
each in a different color, infer the filamentary structures in the nearest
dozen large galaxies, or the Local Sheet.
each in a different color, infer the filamentary structures in the nearest
dozen large galaxies, or the Local Sheet.
Learn more about Mark Neyrinck's work on his website
