American scientists from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii and other scientific institutions have concluded that the Earth’s galactic environment may be an order of magnitude larger than previous estimates. The study was published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy (NatAstron), Day.Az reports with reference to Gazeta.ru.
About 10 years ago, astronomers came to the conclusion that our Milky Way galaxy is located in a huge gravitational basin called Laniakea, stretching over 500 million light years.
In the new study, the team found evidence that Laniakea may be part of an even larger structure, potentially 10 times the volume of Laniakea itself. The likely galactic formation is centered around the Shapley concentration, a region filled with enormous amounts of mass and gravitational pull.
“Our Universe is like a giant web in which galaxies lie along filaments and cluster at nodes where gravitational forces pull them together,” said Brent Tully, one of the lead authors of the paper, astronomer at the University of Houston.
Researchers are assessing these large-scale structures by studying their influence on the motion of galaxies. A galaxy between two such structures will be involved in a gravitational tug of war, in which the balance of gravitational forces of the surrounding large-scale structures determines the motion of the galaxy.
By mapping the speeds of galaxies throughout our local universe, the team can determine the region of space where each supercluster dominates.