Is the Laniakea Supercluster, composed of 100,000 galaxies, the largest structure in the universe?

What is the world to a person? Is it the Earth? No, it is actually the scope of activities centered on oneself.

In this world of self, we feel that we are quite important. This feeling is unconscious and natural. But if we step out of our own world, we will know how insignificant we are, and even marvel at this insignificance. Outside our own world is the Earth, which is extremely large, with a total surface area of ​​more than 510 million square kilometers. No one can travel to every corner of the Earth in his or her lifetime. However, this huge planet is just an ordinary planet in the solar system.

There are eight planets in the solar system, four of which are larger than Earth, much larger.

The solar system is a star system dominated by the only star, the Sun. There is a spherical structure outside the solar system, which we call the "Oort Cloud". It is considered to be the boundary of the solar system. Based on this calculation, the radius of the solar system is about 1 light year. 1 light year is the distance that light travels in one year. It sounds like nothing, but in fact, the speed of light is out of reach for humans. With the current capabilities of humans, it is an impossible task to drive a spacecraft out of the solar system. The size of the solar system makes us sigh, but the solar system is actually just an insignificant star system in the Milky Way.

There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, and we are located in the Orion Arm of this barred spiral galaxy, about 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way.

How big is the Milky Way? Its diameter is about 185,000 light years. This is a terrifying number, which means that even light needs to travel 185,000 years to cross the Milky Way. This is completely beyond our imagination, because even if we imagine it, we can't find a way to leave this huge galaxy. Unless there is some kind of tunnel in the universe that can cross time and space, that kind of thing is called a wormhole.

If the Milky Way is the largest celestial structure, we can still accept it, but unfortunately it is not, and it is far from it.

The Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and dozens of other small galaxies together form a celestial system spanning about 10 million light-years, called the "Local Group". It is roughly estimated that the number of stars in this celestial system should exceed one trillion. However, the Local Group is still insignificant compared to its parent celestial structure, which is the Virgo Supercluster. The Virgo Supercluster contains more than 2,000 galaxies and has a diameter of more than 100 million light-years. In other words, it would take 100 million years to travel at the speed of light to cross this huge celestial system.

Are there any larger celestial structures? Of course there are.

In 2014, scientists discovered a new, even larger celestial structure called the Laniakea Supercluster. The Laniakea Supercluster has a diameter of more than 400 million light years and contains 300 to 500 galaxy clusters, with as many as 100,000 galaxies. Think back, remember the huge Milky Way that made us feel desperate just now? It is just one of these 100,000 galaxies. The Laniakea Supercluster is different from the celestial structures mentioned above. It has a winding shape and consists of 4 main regions.

The region where the Milky Way is located is called the "Local Sheet", in addition to the Jellyfish Sheet, the Lily Sheet and the Antarctic Sheet.

The Laniakea Supercluster is the largest celestial structure we have discovered so far, but it is by no means the largest celestial structure in the universe, because the radius of the observable universe reaches 46.5 billion light years, and there are too many things we have not discovered and cannot discover. Compared with them, we are too small. Humans want to understand the universe, but they cannot even leave the solar system. This is like we want to travel around the world, but no matter how hard we try, we still can't get out of bed.