The cosmic web is the largest-scale pattern of the universe: galaxies are not scattered at random but strung along immense filaments and sheets that surround vast, nearly empty voids. This structure grew from tiny density variations in the early universe, amplified by gravity over billions of years. Our own galaxy sits within the Laniakea supercluster, drawn toward a gravitational focus called the Great Attractor, while regions like the Bootes Void span hundreds of millions of light-years of near-emptiness.
Cosmology · Large-Scale Structure · Voids
In 1981, a redshift survey turned up an emptiness so vast that if the Milky Way sat at its center, we might not have learned other galaxies existed un...
Cosmology · Large-Scale Structure · Superclusters
The Milky Way is falling toward a gravitational anomaly we cannot easily see, hidden behind the dust of our own galaxy. Three decades of measuring how...
Cosmology · Large-Scale Structure · Cosmological Principle
The Cosmological Principle says nothing should be larger than about 1.2 billion light-years. The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is ten billion. T...