Super-Clusters of Galaxies-Largest Structures in Universe

It is said that the largest structures of the Universe are super-clusters of galaxies. There seem to be about fifty of them in the observable area of the Universe which is about twenty-six billion light years across as viewed from the Earth. I ought to point out that the actually area of the Universe may be greater than the area of it that can be seen.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/1785/dark-matter-scaffolding-galactic-supercluster-mapped

-photo credit Hubble Space Telescope Institute

The reason for that discrepancy is that light has a finite speed of travel, and that space-time itself is expanding away from the Earth in most directions. The earliest light that has been seen-the cosmic microwave background of the universe that long ago was very hot and now has cooled down to 3 degrees above absolute zero, was sent out when the Universe was about 300,000 years old according to physical evolutionary models run in reverse. Presently we live in approximately the year 13 billion, seven hundred million years after the inflation of the Universe from time equals zero (T=0) that is regarded as the proximal beginning.

Light has had thus just 13.7 billion years to travel, and that is also thought to be the size of the universe as a radius in light years from Earth.

Looking in space-telescopes like the Hubble S.T. astronomers can view formations of stellar material and nebulas of dust clouds lit up by waves of particles from burning and exploding stars in all their phases of life. There are more than half a dozen basic shapes of galaxies, and also galaxies themselves are drawn together through gravity to form clusters of galaxies and even super-clusters of galaxies.

If there are larger structures in the universe than galaxies that exist, no one knows of any today. Of course one might count space as a larger structure if nothingness is real, or maybe just dimensions as larger, or possibly even the mysterious missing matter and energy of the universe that are believed to exist and act as a sort of hidden gravity affecting galaxies and also as an anti-gravity phenomena pushing all of space-time outward. Actually there may be several larger structures than super-clusters of galaxies, yet as it is now, known are know to the human community on Earth.

Super-clusters of galaxies are fantastic things though. They are vast clumps of tens of millions of galaxies maybe, surrounding vast empty areas of space-time. Today researchers write that the clumps of super-clusters of galaxies around vast empty regions of space-time is a consequence of the initial distribution of mass and energy in the earliest moments of the life history of this Universe that is believed to have inflated like a space-time balloon faster than light for a fraction of a second then slowing down to expand at a sub-luminal pace.

The galactic super cluster our Milky Way Galaxy is located in is a pretty good one named “The Virgo Cluster’. A vast super cluster nearly 730 million light years in size is nearest our Virgo Cluster. It is called ‘The Wall’ or alternately ‘The Great Attractor’ and gives us something slid to ponder being nearly a tenth of the age of the universe itself in comparative expansion of light years in size.

Galactic super-clusters are sad to be connected by thin filament at least. We might one day be able to go on a faster than light journey around the Universe to visit these fifty galactic super-clusters without needing to cross through the deserts of empty space-segregating the essential portions. Without that spacing the superclusters might quickly collapse into a giant black hole prematurely bring an end to al life in the Universe.

Might we travel faster than light by travelling outside of the slid state physical realm f the Universe in which we live, perhaps via extra dimensional did shortcuts? Will we one day have the chance to advise any fellow creatures living in the Universe on important topic like how to live peacefully in dense populations, how to assure that all creatures are given equal opportunity for life’s essential needs, and how to conserve and sustain finite natural resources? Probably not, yet the super-clusters are still worth generations of study for their brilliant status as the largest structures of the visible Universe in which nearly every existing star is set.