News

Super galactic clusters part 2

Second part Laniakea and the giant Arch.

Taking into account last week’s note, how do we know that these clusters exist? Cosmographers is the answer to that question, they are in charge of making the maps of the stars through hundreds of data and with the help of super computers they analyze said data, create intricate maps, which could seem like just a smear of paint, but those maps so intricate reveal that every point on that map are galaxies.

The light spectra of each galaxy are measured to see if they are blue or red and this tells us the direction in which they move and at what speed, this showed that there are thousands of galaxies that flow in the same direction forming a super giant cluster, they seem to advance in a coordinated way, without random movements, as if they were traveling together, thus clusters of galaxies and super clusters of galaxies were discovered.

En al año 2014 se anunció que se había mapeado el supercúmulo gigante en el que reside nuestra galaxia, al que se le llamo Laniakea.

As we have already said, the size of celestial bodies and distances in space may seem unreal, since we do not dimension the gigantic size and we could say that it is almost infinite of this super cluster in which we find ourselves and are part of.

What we can do is try to understand it, and make a small effort to be able to measure, even a little, this super cluster, cosmologists like Helene Courtois from the University of Lyon, say that we imagine a fluvial system, many small streams that they flow into the rivers, all those rivers going to the sea, it’s a way of painting the clusters of galaxies.

Each point on the map is a galaxy, each line is a path followed by the galaxies, these galaxies are inevitably attracted by a gravitational force that flows through these paths, towards a mass called the Great Attracto

The Great Attractor remains a mystery, it could be the mysterious allusive dark matter, or something new, but it is believed to be the mass of trillions of suns. Laniakea, contains about 100,000 galaxies like ours and 100 billion stars, extends over half a billion light years, as we said it is almost infinite compared to our scale, hence its name, Laniakea, which is a Hawaiian term meaning “Immense Sky”.

But this creates many unknowns, because these super clusters are just beginning to be discovered, we do not know exactly why they form, since, although gravity works in a certain way on earth, it does not mean that it works the same in those dimensions, gravity continues being something an unknown and these super clusters make several scientists question principles that were thought already established.

The current model of cosmology, the laws of physics indicate these structures, and some much larger than Laniakea, cannot or should not exist. As is understood, after the Big Bang, matter was uniformly dispersed, the forces acted equally on everything, the power of gravity was able to bring galaxies together and then clusters of galaxies, or so it was believed.

However, not only Laniakea questions these principles, other cosmologists such as Alexia Lopez of the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute of the Central University of Lancashire, England, discovered another super cluster of galaxies that not only questions the cosmological principle, she like many cosmologists they use quasars as torches that illuminate parts of the universe.

Sometimes the light doesn’t go through certain areas, which indicates that there is matter blocking it, and using that data, a 3D map was created, in which a large part of the universe had a pattern, an arc, which should not be possible. galaxies together or clusters of galaxies that formed a Giant Arc.

This arch measures more than 3,000 million light years wide, although the cosmological principle says that the limit should not be more than 1,200 million light years, and it is not the only super structure, the Great Wall of Hercules-Corona Borealis is also a super cluster three times the size of the Giant Arch. This type of super structures changes the way the universe was conceived, its behavior even how humanity got here.

And this is the end of the miniseries of notes on the Galactic Super Clusters, Interesting, now we know that our stellar neighborhood in all its immensity is small compared to said super clusters, but there is still little time to see what effects these super clusters have investigations in our life. So relax and keep looking at the stars.