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.
A body in motion etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
So I get the idea of the new grouping. Some things we used to consider our neighbors, we're actually just flying past and have no long term connection to.
I get why that's useful. But I don't get why it'd replace our existing grouping. For a human lifespan, that grouping is all but permanent.
Misplaced? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't click-open the article. Imagine if we slashdotted an entire Beowulf cluster of galaxies.
Seriously, though, how could we have missed that many nearby galaxies for so long? Did we not see them, underestimate their size, miscalculate their location or direction due to dust being in the way?
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
You're not the only one to start thinking along these lines. You might be interested in this somewhat random and unrepresentative set of papers:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/... [arxiv.org]
http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.4280 [arxiv.org]
http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.0552 [arxiv.org]
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4688 [arxiv.org]
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5554 [arxiv.org]
I know very little about this area myself but it seems relatively settled that the fractal dimension of the universe - if such can be defined and has a meaningful interpretation - is between 2.5 and 3.