Welcome To Laniakea, Our New Cosmic Home 67
astroengine writes Using a new mapping technique that takes into account the motions — and not just the distances — of nearby galaxies, astronomers discovered that the Milky Way is located in the suburb of a massive, previously unknown super-cluster they named Laniakea, a term from Hawaiian words meaning "immeasurable heaven." Actually, Laniakea's girth is measurable, though difficult to conceptualize. The super-cluster spans 520 million light-years in diameter, more than five times larger than the cluster previously believed to be the Milky Way's cosmic home.
Re:A body in motion etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
It replaces the new grouping in much the same way Einstein replaced Newtonian mechanics. It is a more accurate description of our place in the universe, just as relativity is a more accurate description of moving bodies, even if on human scales the two are nearly indistinguishable.
Just 520M LY? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, that's less than 160 MegaParsecs. Not that much bigger than the already-cramped Virgo Supercluster at 33MPa. Still the name is quite nice.
Not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A body in motion etc. (Score:4, Insightful)
Analogies are never exact correspondences. They're simply more or less useful. People who replace 'useful' with 'accurate' in that sentence are like a clown car full of lawyers in a fruit flavored hailstorm.