The Platonic Universe: Do Foundation Models See the Same Sky?

We test the Platonic Representation Hypothesis (PRH) in astronomy by measuring representational convergence across a range of foundation models trained on different data types. Using spectroscopic and imaging observations from JWST, HSC, Legacy Survey, and DESI, we compare representations from vision transformers, self-supervised models, and astronomy-specific architectures via mutual $k$-nearest neighbour analysis. We observe consistent scaling: representational alignment generally increases with model capacity across our tested architectures, supporting convergence toward a shared representation of galaxy astrophysics. Our results suggest that astronomical foundation models can use pre-trained general-purpose architectures, allowing us to capitalise on the broader machine learning community's already-spent computational investment.

Publication Details

Journal
ArXiv.org
Published
2025-09-23
Primary Topic
Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
Type
article
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article

The Platonic Universe: Do Foundation Models See the Same Sky?

ArXiv.org
Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
article

The Platonic Universe: Do Foundation Models See the Same Sky?

article en

Abstract

We test the Platonic Representation Hypothesis (PRH) in astronomy by measuring representational convergence across a range of foundation models trained on different data types. Using spectroscopic and imaging observations from JWST, HSC, Legacy Survey, and DESI, we compare representations from vision transformers, self-supervised models, and astronomy-specific architectures via mutual $k$-nearest neighbour analysis. We observe consistent scaling: representational alignment generally increases with model capacity across our tested architectures, supporting convergence toward a shared representation of galaxy astrophysics. Our results suggest that astronomical foundation models can use pre-trained general-purpose architectures, allowing us to capitalise on the broader machine learning community's already-spent computational investment.

ArXiv.org
Openalex Percentile: Top 26%
Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
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The Platonic Universe: Do Foundation Models See the Same Sky? · ArXiv.org (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS