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Physics Lesson 22.6.5 - Hierarchic Structures of Galaxies Organization
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Welcome to our Physics lesson on Hierarchic Structures of Galaxies Organization, this is the fifth lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Galaxies and Hierarchic Structures in the Universe, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
Hierarchic Structures of Galaxies Organization
Galaxies themselves are organized in even larger structures based on the mutual attraction effect caused by gravitational forces. These structures are known as groups of galaxies. For example, the Milky Way galaxy is part of a group that includes 31 galaxies known as the Local Group. Three of the aforementioned galaxies, namely Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud and Andromeda are members of the Local Group of galaxies. The dimensions of Local Group are a few million light years. Despite the huge dimensions of local Group, there exist other groups of galaxies that are much larger than Local Group and which include several thousand galaxies.
Groups of galaxies on the other hand, are not distributed uniformly in the space; they tend to gather in supergroups leaving enormous empty spaces between them. However, in a wider scale, the Universe is quite uniform as shown in the figure below, where the two hemispheres (Northern and Southern) of the Universe are visibly distinct from each other.
The order of dimensions and quantity of all groups of stars are summarized in the table below.
The long distances given in the above table are not detected immediately; the information from a given star comes to us with a delay in time equal to the distance in light years of that star from the Earth (where we observe the light). The Universe is believed to be 13.7 billion years old. This means the farthest object we can detect from Earth can be 13.7 billion light years away.
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- Continuing learning cosmology - read our next physics tutorial: Astronomical Measurements and Observations
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