Supercluster

As superclusters or super clusters of galaxies is called gravitationally bound collections of several clusters of galaxies. They are one of the largest structures in the universe visible to us.

Structure and arrangement in the universe

A large-scale view of the universe shows that galaxies are not uniformly distributed, but that the universe has a foam or honeycomb -like structure. The inside of the honeycomb corresponds huge empty spaces, the so-called voids. The galaxies are grouped - because of their mutual gravitational attraction - clusters of galaxies around these voids around and speak form the walls of the honeycomb.

In the sectional areas between the honeycomb galaxy clusters density is therefore higher and here were formed, again due to the gravitational attraction, collections of clusters, called superclusters. These are, in addition to connecting them with each other filaments, the biggest so far discovered structures in the universe. You can achieve an area of ​​several hundred million light years and consist of several thousand galaxies. Eg However, the knowledge of the supercluster is still very limited, it is not yet clear whether the superclusters are held together only by gravity, or whether they have been grouped from other processes. The influence of dark matter, which may also play a role, is currently the subject of further research. It can currently only be assumed that the dark matter ( about 74 % of all matter in the universe ) has a much higher influence on the formation of superclusters, as previously thought.

Known superclusters

Our Milky Way is part of a supercluster, namely the Virgo supercluster (also called the Local Supercluster ), forms the center of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. For Local Super Cluster are in addition to the Local Group of the numerous groups of galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood, such as the M81 group and the Sculptor group, which included most of the brighter galaxies.

It is also known the much larger, but six times more distant Coma Supercluster, in which the so-called Great Wall (English Great Wall ) is located. The mightiest supercluster is located in the constellation Horologium; another is named after the astronomer Harlow Shapley, and the so-called Great Attractor. A study of our environment up to a redshift of ( nearly 1.5 billion light-years ) showed about 130 superclusters. The largest superclusters in our vicinity are listed in the table below, where " size " is the number of rich clusters of galaxies indicates that constitute the supercluster: