Earth's location in the universe

The position of the Earth in the universe today is relatively known in detail, which is due to the progress of the practical and theoretical astronomy and cosmology the last 400 years and especially the last century. Originally prevailed before the geocentric world view, the view that the Earth was at the center of a universe that is made up of sun, moon, visible with the naked eye planets and an outer sphere of fixed stars.

According to the general recognition of the heliocentric world view in the 17th century that observations of William Herschel and other researchers that the sun is in an extended, disk-shaped system that consists of countless of the sun corresponding stars, the Milky Way. In the 20th century, the space research showed that the Milky Way is only one of many other galaxies in the universe. Finally, the overall structure of the observable universe was clear. Neighboring galaxies grouped into clusters, which in turn form superclusters. These in turn are connected to a network of filaments and voids, which are the likely großräumigsten coherent structures of the universe. On even larger scales ( about 1,000 megaparsecs ) considered, the universe finally appears homogeneous - so it has all its parts the same average density and composition - and isotropic - its visible components are thus independent of the viewing direction equally distributed.

Since the universe according to widely shared opinion, neither "center " still has " edge ", there is no specific reference point from which could be stated in the universe from an absolute position of the earth. The earth (or any location of an observer ) is, however, very comfortable and at any time in the center of the observable universe since its observability is limited in each direction of looking at the same distance, it every so centrally positioned observer in the form of an (imaginary ) sphere enclosing. Information on the (relative) position of the earth, however, with respect to certain structures can be made. For example, its position in the solar system or turn its position within the galaxy is known. Unanswered, however, remains the question of whether the universe is infinite, and there is speculation that see it as one of many universes in a multiverse, which in turn is contained in the Omniverse.

Film

The U.S. educational film Ten High from 1977 represents the universe is at all at the time, scientifically researched scales and thereby moves up to 1024 meters ( about 32 megaparsecs ), ie in the order of magnitude of the Virgo supercluster.