+
upworthy
Heroes

We already knew the Earth was not the center of the universe, but now we know exactly where it is.

It's hard to wrap your head around the vastness of the universe. But a recent discovery has made it just a little easier to understand our place among the stars.

Scientists have mapped more than 8,000 galaxies to find the Earth's official address, and it turns out the universe is even bigger than we thought.

Have you ever wondered where in the universe the Milky Way actually is? Like, literally where? In the vast expanse of nothingness that we call outer space, where exactly are we? You might think that sounds rhetorical, but it's not. And a recent discovery, as seen in this new video from Nature, has made it even easier to understand.

Well. Kind of.



GIF set from Nature.

Just as a group of celestial bodies is a galaxy and a group of galaxies is a cluster, a group of galactic clusters is known as a "supercluster" (not very original, I know).

Scientists had previously thought that our own galaxy was positioned at the edge of the Local Supercluster that itself was centered on the Virgo Cluster, which they believed to be about 100 million light-years wide. That's the equivalent of 1.03461597 × 1022 American football fields (or so Google tells me), which is such a ridiculously huge number that it probably didn't do anything to help you understand the scope of it.

But that's OK, because that number was off. Like, waaaaaaay off. So throw away all your preconceived notions of incomprehensibly exponential intergalactic football fields and say hello to your new home supercluster!

Our local supercluster has been named Laniakea, which means "immeasurable heaven" in Hawaiian. Because it's that freaking huge.

GIF set from Nature.

By defining the boundaries of Laniakea, we have a greater view of the universe as a whole — and a clearer understanding of our exact position in relation to it.

Scientists rely on physics, and waves of light in particular, to measure things on a galactic scale. Because Home Depot is always sold out of their light-year measuring tapes (plus those things are pretty hard to fit into the bed of your pickup truck), they examine the behavioral patterns of light waves and color spectrums to figure out how they work in a room, then apply that understanding to see how it works across an open field, then across an entire planet, then from the sun to the Earth, and so on.

By identifying and understanding the behavior of waves in a supercluster, they're better able to identify similar patterns beyond Laniakea. But it's hard to know what patterns are occurring beyond Laniakea if you don't know where it ends.

Think of it this way: Sometimes it's easier to define a thing by the lack of the thing. If we can identify something's absence, then the opposite of that absence must be the thing itself, right? So we're able to understand Laniakea because of what is not Laniakea — and now that we've defined it, we can start to figure what all that not-Laniakea stuff is actually about.


GIF from "Community."

Each celestial body has its own gravitational pull, but everything within the supercluster is being pulled toward the Great Attractor.

Right now you're probably all wide-eyed like: "Hey tell me more about your friend the Great Attractor. I'd like to get to know the Great Attractor, if ya know what I'm sayin'." Which I get. Because the Great Attractor is very attractive. And I would totally love to set you two up but, well, we're not entirely sure what the Great Attractor is beyond its pretty massive gravitational pull.

(....waiting for you to get your "that's what she said" giggles out....)

Basically, the universe is like a Russian nesting doll. Kind of.

You know, the ones where each recursive doll contains a smaller but otherwise identical doll within it, and so on and so on? Our moon revolves around the mass of the Earth — that's our smallest doll. By understanding the relationship between the moon and the Earth, we're able to extrapolate and understand how the Earth revolves around the Sun. That's our next-size-up doll. And it keeps going.

It's not a perfect analogy. But it's good enough for now as a macrocosmic shorthand. Anyway...


Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images.

As we continue to increase in size, each successive celestial body helps us understand the next piece of the puzzle.

Back to superclusters. Right now, Laniakea is the largest of the galactic Russian nesting dolls (excepting for the universe as a whole, which, being that it's infinite, is kind of hard to distill into a single egg-shaped wooden babushka). And everything within the Laniakea supercluster — ourselves included — is being pulled toward this same mysterious Great Attractor.

But things still exist beyond Laniakea. If we understand that everything within Laniakea shares the same attractor, then we can use the same approach to figure out if things in Not-Laniakea also share a mutual force that's opposite from our own. And that's exactly what these scientists did, and how they were able to identify and define our friendly next-door supercluster, Perseus-Pisces.

TL;DR — Laniakea is bigger than we thought, and now that we know it exists, we also know that there's another equally ginormous supercluster that exists opposite it.

This is my mind, being blown. Obvi.

So what does this actually mean for us as individuals, or for humankind as a whole? Well, at the moment ... not much.

We think of outer space as an endless expanse of incomprehensible nothingness. Which it is. But figuring out a new way to map it brings us that much closer to figuring out how it works, and what else is out there, and what our relationship is to all of it. If scientists can figure out how to map our immediate (ha!) supercluster, then they can use the same formulas to map uncharted territories as well. And from there, who knows what they'll find?

That being said, you might want to update your address book to read "Street, City, State, County, USA, North America, Northern Hemisphere, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster, Laniakea, The Universe." Just in case you're worried that the Intergalactic Postal Service won't be able to deliver your holiday cards across the infinite blackness of space.

Watch the video below to bask in the beauty of Laniakea, with much more official-y explanations than I could ever give:

The gaze of the approving Boomer.

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it's wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations' hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of moden life has become insufferanble.

Keep ReadingShow less

Klein Kwagga understood the assignment at his sister's concert.

Some kids are too shy to ever want to get on a stage, some will spend most of a performance staring awkwardly at their shoes, and some kids love the opportunity to show off what they've practiced in front of an audience.

And then there are the kids were simply born for the spotlight. You know them when you see them.

When Dirkco Jansen van Nieuwenhuizen hopped on stage with all of the other brothers and sisters of the dance students at René’s Art of Dance in South Africa, no one expected a viral sensation. According to Capetown Etc, it was the school's year-end concert, and siblings were invited to come up and dance to Bernice West’s Lyfie—a popular song in Afrikaans. And Dirkco, who goes by Klein Kwagga, took the assignment and ran with it.

Keep ReadingShow less

Prepare to get Thatcherized.

It seems that Adele is going viral once again.

Perhaps you’ve seen the image in question previously (it seems to make the rounds every couple of years). But in case you missed it—it’s Adele’s face. Normal, just upside down.

Only it’s not normal. In fact, when you turn Adele’s face right side up, what you notice is that her eyes and mouth were actually right-side up THE ENTIRE TIME, even though the entire head was upside down. So when you turn the head right side up, the eyes and mouth are now UPSIDE-DOWN—and you can’t unsee it. Do you feel like you're Alice in Wonderland yet?

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

People share the most practical ways to support new parents

There's a lot of preparation that goes into having a child well before they're even born. First there are the physical changes your body makes to clear up some space for a tiny human roughly the size of a watermelon. Then there's preparing the nursery, buying lots of extremely small clothes, diapers and an expected understanding that while sleep may be your friend, you won't be getting any of it for about a year.

Lots of people give plenty of advice to help you cope in the early days but after the baby arrives, the focus shifts to solely the baby. It's obviously not a deliberate shift. Babies are just more shiny and new that the parents. But not everyone forgets about the parents once baby makes their grand entrance–some go out of their way to make sure the parents feel supported.

Upworthy asked its audience, "what was the best non-baby related gift you received as a new parent," and the answers were a masterclass on how to care for new parents.

Keep ReadingShow less
Family

A mom seeks doctor's help for postpartum depression and instead gets a visit from the cops

Too many women lose out on much needed support because of unwarranted stigma.

Canva

Postpartum depression is very common, and treatable.

Jessica Porten recently visited her doctor four months after giving birth to her daughter, Kira. She wasn't feeling quite like herself.

She had been dealing with overwhelming sadness and fits of anger, which she knew was likely stemming from a case of postpartum depression.

In a Facebook post, Porten recounts the story of that appointment.

Keep ReadingShow less
Identity

Formerly enslaved man's response to his 'master' wanting him back is a literary masterpiece

"I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters."

A photo of Jordan Anderson.

In 1825, at the approximate age of 8, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled "Jordon") was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio, where, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.

On Aug. 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter, entitled "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance, and dignity. That year, the letter would be republished in theNew York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child's "The Freedman's Book."

The letter mentions a "Miss Mary" (Col. Anderson's Wife), "Martha" (Col. Anderson's daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson's son), and George Carter (a local carpenter).

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Keep ReadingShow less