Posted on 06/08/2017 8:32:28 PM PDT by MtnClimber
If you went to give our cosmic address, you might tell someone that we lived on planet Earth, orbiting our Sun, on the outskirts of a spur of the Milky Way's spiral arms, in the second largest galaxy in our local group, about 50 million light years from the Virgo Cluster, embedded within the Laniakea supercluster. Well, you might have to add another line to that address, as Laniakia, along with dozens of other nearby giant clusters, is all embedded within a great cosmic void stretching a billion light years from end-to-end. This below-average region of space is consistent with everything we observe, supported by new observations presented at this week's American Astronomical Society meeting, and just might provide the solution to one of the Universe's greatest discrepancies.
On the largest scales, the Universe is uniform, with equal amounts of matter and energy everywhere. If you drew an imaginary sphere a few billion light years wide around any point and measured the total amount of mass inside, you'd get the same number everywhere, to about 99.99% accuracy. But if your sphere were smaller, you'd see you'd start to get different numbers in different locations. Gravitation pulls matter into filaments, groups and clusters of galaxies, and steals matter away from less dense regions, creating great cosmic voids.
Today, matter in the Universe is distributed like a combination of a spider web and swiss cheese. The "holes" in the Universe are stupendous, with some stretching tens of millions of light years across before you run into any galaxies at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
We may be in a void, but we are only a few billion years from colliding with the Andromeda Galaxy.
Yakko’s Universe - The Animaniacs
Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it’s worth.
And they’re all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.
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.
And we’re part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth’s the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley’s Comet too.
And there’s over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.
And still it’s all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It’s sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that’s just a fraction of the way.
‘Cause there’s a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!
It’s a great big universe
And we’re all really puny
We’re just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
Though we don’t know how it got here
We’re an important part here
It’s a big universe and it’s ours!
The “holes” in the Universe are stupendous...
Don’t I know it.
Andromeda is part of what is called our “Local Cluster” of galaxies. But that cluster may be a tiny number compared to galaxy density elsewhere.
I always knew that we were in the low rent district.
Not a bad place to be, more galaxies mean more stars forming, means more super and hyper nova, means more chance of planet getting blasted by sterilizing radiation....
Sometimes it’s good to be in the sticks....
But what a view.
I hate when spiderwebs are on my swiss cheese.
Therefore I reject your reality and substitute my own.
I hate when spiderwebs are on my swiss cheese.
Therefore I reject your reality and substitute my own.
With the abundance of ‘stars’ in the sky, one wonders why it is even dark at night.
That's why there is liability insurance.
No ***t Sherlock.
Now, how about how do we get rid of killer koranimals?
Y'know, something relevant to our lives?
Why give anyone in space my address? I can’t even get my local mail delivered correctly to my home.
No use pissing off some powerful space aliens.
Bfl
Ya think you got problems now? Think of it!
Spam without limit!
Ironically, the Wikipedia article on STARLIGHT gives me nothing, but there is a Wikipedia article on DAYLIGHT which gives various comparisons in terms of "lux"
Most significant to me are:
111,000 lux ... Bright sunlight
0.002 lux ... Starlight clear moonless night sky including airglow
0.0002 lux ... Starlight clear moonless night sky excluding airglow
0.00014 lux ... Venus at brightest
I.e. airglow is ten times starlight, and Venus is about as bright as all the stars put together.
A God who created everything, placed us in the perfect place in the universe. Fantastic!
We’re in the rural Nevada of the Universe. :)
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