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2024-11-11

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Our Galaxy Appears To Be Part Of Structure So Large It Challenges Our Models Of Cosmology (www.iflscience.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Astronomers have found that our galaxy, the Milky Way, may be a tiny part of an even larger local structure than we thought. The research, if confirmed by further observations and studies, may be evidence that we haven't quite nailed down our model of the evolution of the universe.

As we study the universe more, we have found ourselves to be part of much larger structures, formed by gravitational interactions. We orbit the Sun, the Sun is part of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which includes several small galaxies as well as Andromeda, of "it may collide with us" fame.

But it doesn't stop there. The Local Group is on the outer edge of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself part of a giant basin known as Laniakea. According to the new study, Laniakea too resides within a larger "basin of attraction" (BoA) potentially 10 times its volume.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Pretty sure our entire universe is just a cell of a larger something. Or were in a simulation. Either way.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

"Everything is just a small version of something big!"

Finn

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. Infinitely large, infinitely small.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

As above so below.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney
It's big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It's a big universe, and we're not!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

It’s a giant brain.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I’ve thought this for ages myself also. Loved it when Men In Black kinda memed it also lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A while ago I had a mini existential crisis about how things existing at all just makes no sense, and eventually concluded that things existing at all means that "nothing" is in some way unnatural and has a chance to become matter, which would then imply infinite universes as there would have to be infinite "nothing", since that's what would be outside our universe.

So yea, I'm thinking it's probably large somethings for forever, always getting larger.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

There's always a bigger ... Structure.