The region of space we live in may be much larger than we think. New research reveals that intergalactic superclusters milky way It could be part of an even larger “basin of attraction”, up to 10 times larger than the place we currently call home.
The universe is full of basins of gravitational attraction (BOAs), regions where the gravity of massive objects pulls everything inward. BOAs can be stacked on top of each other like nesting dolls. For example, the moon revolves around the earth. orbits the sun along with the rest of the solar system itself swirling around a supermassive black hole At the center of our galaxy.
But the story It doesn’t end there. The next layer of the BOA doll is the local group, which includes the Milky Way, Andromeda, Triangular Galaxies, and smaller satellite galaxies such as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Then the next layer is the Virgo cluster, which contains about 2,000 galaxies, and the larger Virgo supercluster. The last known layer is Laniakea (Hawaiian for “vast heaven”). This is a supercluster that was first discovered in 2014 and contains about 100,000 galaxies, with an area of about 500 million galaxies. light years Across.
However, a new study published September 27th in the journal natural astronomyresearchers analyzed the relative movements of more than 56,000 galaxies. 3D “stochastic” map Of all the BOAs surrounding the Milky Way. This made it clear that there was enough potential our home galaxy It is part of the larger BOA (Shapley Concentration), which has a volume up to 10 times that of Laniākea. (Scientists already knew about the existence of the Shapley concentration, but didn’t previously think it affected the Milky Way.)
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“Perhaps it’s no surprise that the deeper we look into the universe, the more we find that our home superclusters are more connected and more widespread than we thought.” said the co-author. Norm Libeskindsaid a cosmologist at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, Germany. statement. “It’s very exciting to discover that we are likely part of a much larger structure.”
At present, researchers (most of whom are involved in Laniakea’s discovery) believe there is a 60% chance that the Milky Way exists in the Shapley Concentration Zone. This uncertainty is mainly caused by the high error rate in measuring the velocities of distant galaxies and the presence of galaxies. dark matter Intergalactic galaxies can have enormous gravitational effects on large areas of the universe, invisible to the naked eye.
If true, this new discovery could mean that the Milky Way is not part of Laniakea, and the celestial supercluster may not even exist. Rather, it may be just the outer part of the Shapley concentration, the researchers said in a statement.
This map shows dozens of objects spread out over billions of light-years around the Shapley concentration. antarctic wall, Cavity of Boes and the Perseus-Pisces supercluster. The largest BOA on the map is the Sloan Great Wall, which spans approximately 1.4 billion light years.
The new map will help us more precisely pinpoint our location in the vast universe, but it also raises the possibility that even more information is missing, the researchers wrote.
“This discovery presents a challenge: our space surveys may not yet be large enough to map the full extent of these giant basins,” study co-authors said. . Ethan Krkuchsaid a University of Hawaii astronomer in a separate article. statement. “We’re still looking through giant eyes, but even those eyes may not be big enough to capture the full picture of the universe.”
Check out the interactive version of the new map below. The different colored blobs represent basins of different attractions (light yellow is the Shapley concentration, blue is Laniakea, red is the Great Wall of Sloan). The Milky Way is located at the intersection of the red, blue, and green arrows.
