Laniakea: Our home supercluster
Why Hacker News recommends it
Linked as a quick visual intro to Laniakea and large-scale cosmic structure.
What it is
A short Nature video on the discovery that our home supercluster is Laniakea, redefined by mapping the flow of galaxies rather than their density. It names the structure with a Hawaiian word meaning 'immeasurable heaven'.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2022 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends ok_computer · 2022-02 · on “Nearly 1k mysterious strands revealed in Milky Way’s center”
I like these two from the authors of the Laniakea super cluster paper in 2014 Nature: [this video] Contributing Author: [LINK]
Cites jerf · 2022-03 · on “First images from James Webb telescope exceed expectations”
As well as what ISL said, if the universe is toroidial it seems like it's larger than our visible horizon. While images of an individual galaxy might be hard to tell if they are repeated, we can see enough of the structure of the universe that if our visible horizon was much larger than the real value of the universe and there was wrapping going on, we'd see it. This isn't the exact sort of video I'm looking for, but it's close enough to what I'm talking about: [this video] Everywhere we look we see distinct structures. It is not a bad thought, though. It may well do some sort of wrapping around, just at a larger scale than we can see. It's an open problem.
Cites pmlnr · 2023-07 · on “Laniakea Supercluster”
There's also a short video on this: [this video] Plus there's that scene from Stargate Universe: - Are those stars? - No, those are galaxies.