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Welcome To Laniakea, Our New Cosmic Home
astroengine writes Using a new mapping technique that takes into account the motions — and not just the distances — of nearby galaxies, astronomers discovered that the Milky Way is located in the suburb of a massive, previously unknown super-cluster they named Laniakea, a term from Hawaiian words meaning "immeasurable heaven." Actually, Laniakea's girth is measurable, though difficult to conceptualize. The super-cluster spans 520 million light-years in diameter, more than five times larger than the cluster previously believed to be the Milky Way's cosmic home.
So I get the idea of the new grouping. Some things we used to consider our neighbors, we're actually just flying past and have no long term connection to.
I get why that's useful. But I don't get why it'd replace our existing grouping. For a human lifespan, that grouping is all but permanent.
If it is that fat it must be an American super cluster.
Seems indistinguishable from our old cosmic home to me, don't know why we bothered moving.
The Universe was such a nice place before all this suburban sprawl took over. Stupid commuters.
Hell, that's less than 160 MegaParsecs. Not that much bigger than the already-cramped Virgo Supercluster at 33MPa. Still the name is quite nice.
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Your momma so fat ...
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Just what we needed another taxing authority.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Actually, Laniakea's girth is measurable, though difficult to conceptualize.
I understand that pain too.
1 cubic light year of water should weight thousands of times more than it, at least if there is enough oxigen in the universe to make that cube.
Sort of, but most horse porn is actually one horse/one human for safety reasons. Horse cocks are extremely girthy and there is much preparation for both sucking off the horse and letting it fuck you, not to mention there's really not much more than one human can do on a single horse, i for one would definitely never put my cock near a horse's mouth, and I've seen too many people kicked by horses to want to sneak up on its rear end while some else is sucking it off, vaginal penetration (man on horse) is possible but also extremely risky and dangerous, and requires a very calm mare. Also, if you can think of any possible way to have two dudes fucking the horse's ass AND it's vagina, let me know because the logistics are complicated and I'm not a gymnast. Not to mention that horses are notoriously difficult to force into working together. I grew up on a farm and I never ever saw a horse gangbang, however although I'm not gay I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't utterly fascinated by watching the horse cocks go from soft to utterly gigantic.
You know, if you keep building more and more high ways the cities will sprawl uncontrollably. Al Gore warned us about it back in 2000. (If he had not, he would have, I mean at least it is the sort of thing he would have warned about). Now we have sprawled to some 500 million light year diameter. When you face that impossibly long commute, remember that prophetic sage.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
or this is the part where she puts her forearm up next to it...
What was I about to say? Oh - yes. And all this vast space with dark matter and dark energy and galaxies and gas and stars and planets. And if there's nothing intelligible there, nothing intelligent, no thought whatsoever. Just physical world, nohingness filled with the quiet and sometimnes not so quiet clockwork of time and physics and particles. Then us, we, here -- do we even exist?
. . . the further we're able to look, the larger the structures we'll be able to perceive.
We've gone from a geocentric model to being part of a galactic super-cluster. It seems to me that our reality is fractal in nature; and it wouldn't surprise me if at every step we find our reality to be a cell of a much larger one.
I can't click-open the article. Imagine if we slashdotted an entire Beowulf cluster of galaxies.
Seriously, though, how could we have missed that many nearby galaxies for so long? Did we not see them, underestimate their size, miscalculate their location or direction due to dust being in the way?
Table-ized A.I.
Actually, Laniakea's girth is measurable, though difficult to conceptualize. The super-cluster spans 520 million light-years in diameter, more than five times larger than the cluster previously believed to be the Milky Way's cosmic home.
520 million light years in diameter is about half of Rosie O'Donnell's waist. So, in actuality, it isn't so difficult to conceptualize.
A better analogy would be from switching from carburetors to fuel injection.
This is Slashdot. Car analogies, people. Car analogies.
Think of all the resources we can get there once we can 3D print private space tourist rockets! It's the Second Space Age!
One wonders how long it will be until it's entirely represented in Elite: Dangerous. :)
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
We all live in Hawaii now!
Now I have to get new return labels for interstellar shipping.
..we go from 520 million light years in our local group to what? 46 billion light years of known universe, shy of 28 billion light years observable? If this new label represents a neighbourhood, then the universe is what, a small town?
Where's the difficulty in conceptualising?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
It's sad that this is probably one of the last places this kind of joke can be made, since Fark took the shit plunge.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Fuel injection will never look as cool as two high CFM Holley four barrel carbs sitting above an engine, in series with a blower plenum. Or six two-barrels. Never. :)
Just the same way my state of the art Marantz home theater will never look as cool as my late 1970's 2325 Marantz receiver.
A particular technology may be peak, performance wise; but that's no indicator it's the peak aesthetically as well.
Clipper ships / modern freighters. Another good example. Beauties and the beasts.
etc.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yeah, we know it's not european because there's no sign of hairy armpit nebulae, wooly leg superclusters, star spectrums completely missing the deodorant line, or clouds of warm beer molecule based dark matter. No sign of aliens duking it out over a soccer ball, either.
Beer. Space. Arghh. Now I have to go re-read Pohl's "The Makeshift Rocket." See what you've done?
Laniakea, meaning "immeasurable heaven". But we have just measured it right?
Laniakea is also a place in Oahu I used to live, so my first thought is why does anyone care who moves to a little town on an island.
just saying..
It's crazy how lost we can be in the universe. I mean, we might get a new home in the immensity anytime soon.