The "Mysterious Organization" of the Milky Way —— Rania Kaya Supercluster

In the universe, celestial bodies play different roles in different organizations and different positions according to their "identities".

For example, our earth is a planet revolving around the sun. As the core of the solar system, the sun leads the whole solar system to rotate around the center of the Milky Way, about once every 250 million years.

About 100 years ago, American astronomer Hubble discovered the extragalactic galaxy and learned that the Milky Way is not the whole universe, but an island in the vast ocean of the universe. At that time, people thought that the upper layer of the galaxy was the universe.

Later, it was found that galaxies would exist in a larger organizational form under the action of gravity, and scientists named them galaxy clusters. There are countless connections among galaxy clusters, and a large number of galaxy clusters can form a larger structure-supercluster.

Take the Milky Way as an example. It is in the local cluster of galaxies. This is an area with a diameter of about 65.438+0 billion light years, which contains about 50 galaxies. This cluster belongs to virgo supercluster, also known as local supercluster, with a long diameter of 30 million parsec (1 parsec equals 3.26 light years) and a thickness of 2 million parsec.

However, recent research shows that we seem to have some misunderstandings about our local galaxy cluster and local supercluster.

In 20 14, a team led by Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii and Helen courtois of the First University of Lyon, France, made an astronomical observation, and unexpectedly found that the local supercluster seemed to be only a part of the larger cosmic structure.

We know that in the universe, every galaxy as a whole is constantly moving. This is also a truth in the field of physics: motion is absolute and stillness is relative. According to the theory of cosmic expansion, galaxies are like two points on an inflated balloon, which are getting farther and farther away from us.

However, what is actually observed is that some galaxies are not moving away as quickly as expected. Based on this, scientists found that different galaxies also have independent movements in the cluster of galaxies, trying to explain the deviation between theory and practice in the movement of galaxies.

However, this problem remains unsolved. Although this movement has reduced some mistakes, it has not completely eliminated them. Scientists believe that dark matter and dark energy cause this phenomenon. They only have gravitational interaction with other substances, which leads to abnormal motion of galaxies.

Combining these factors, galaxies in the universe will have very complex shapes. Simply put, the universe is like a pond, and galaxies are like swimming rings on the pond. The expansion of the universe is equivalent to the water flow in the pond, and dark matter is an invisible hole in the pond. They work together on galaxies, leading to the irregular motion of galaxies.

When observing the movement of these galaxies, Tully found that all kinds of celestial bodies in the huge area of 520 million light-years in Fiona Fang, including our own galaxy clusters, are "flowing" in the pond of the universe in the same pattern. Based on this, they defined a huge cosmic structure-Ranyakaya supercluster.

In this huge supercluster, the local supercluster we originally defined is only a small part of it. Rania Kaya has at least 654.38 million+galaxies. Besides the local supercluster, it also includes the Peacock-India supercluster and the Serpent-Centauri supercluster.

At present, scientists are not completely sure where the boundary of Ranyakaya is. In the future, scientists may find that it has a larger scope or structure than Rania Kaya.

The mysterious connection between various structures in the universe is still difficult for human beings to speculate. We need constant observation and analysis, and maybe we can get a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of the highest structure of the universe.