Tuesday 10 October 2023

HOW BIG IS THE UNIVERSE?

 It is too large for our ape brains to begin comprehending, really.

The very first thing that impresses people is seeing how big our own solar system is. You have asked for what’s beyond the superclusters though so I won’t waste any time on that.

The Virgo Supercluster contains something like 47000 galaxies. Beyond it is a group of neighboring superclusters. Every point on this image is a group of several groups of clustered galaxies.

At this scale we’re talking about distances of hundreds of millions of light-years. Beyond that is the region of space we have been able to observe so far.

The observable universe is 93 billion light-years across. It’s as far as we can observe because the light from beyond its boundaries hasn’t had the time to reach us yet. However, the universe doesn’t stop there.

We don’t know how much farther the universe expands or if it may extend for infinity.

It may also be worth noting the existence of the Solar Interstellar Neighborhood, consisting of a few of the closest stars to our own Sun and the division of our spiral galaxy into several main arms, us being located in the Orion Arm.

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