What do Physarum cosmoldogists think about how nearby galaxies are connected?

While it is established that galaxies neighboring each other in the Universe are generally connected by concentrations of matter called filaments, individual filaments are often practically impossible to observe. In the Local Sheet, an unusually flat structure that is the Milky Way's home, it is largely unknown which galaxies are connected to each other by these strands. Computer algorithms inspired by Physarum slime mold have been developed in the last few years to find how galaxies are connected in 3D maps from surveys of the sky, and these are among the physically meaningful methods to do so. But to our knowledge, biological experiments of Physarum itself have not previously been used for this purpose, and we will discuss ours. The Local Sheet is ideal for this: it is particularly meaningful, as our home, and also happens to be convenient, since it is essentially a 2D arrangement. It fits nicely in a standard petri dish, if the dozen or so large galaxies are represented by the oat flakes that Physarum gravitates toward. We will characterize the opinion of many experiments about the connectivity of galaxies around us, each one a little ‘cosmoldogist,’ taking due note of the variance among their opinions. Each cosmoldogist builds an efficient structure, but how close is each to optimal? And is ‘optimal’ even clearly defined in this context?