Shapley 8 supergalaxy

[bjorkstrand]

The image has got arms to it.
Maybe a trillion galaxies.

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com./wsupercl.gif

Perhaps the shapley 8 supergalaxy goes around quasar 3C273.

Jim

 

[bjorkstrand]

Amy Mainzer refers to it at youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQP_w3dV ... PL&index=7

Jim

 

[bjorkstrand]

Shapley 8 proof is at

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-re ... vski-1-06/

as being THE great attractor.

Jim

 

[robnissen]

The article you linked to is fascinating. What I find very interesting, but not mentioned in the article, is that the superclusters do not at all appear to be randomly distributed but rather there seems to be a large concentration in the plane running from the SW (the Horologum SC) up to the NE (the Corona-Boreailis SC). Even more interesting it appears that the motion of the MW is within that plane heading towards the Great Attractor. I have absolutely no idea what the meaning of that could be, if any, but it is fascinating.

 

[ramparts]

rob, I think you're just seeing the Virgin Mary in the picture There may be some structure there, but it really doesn't look like anything very significant above random; patterns appear in random distributions all the time, just look at our constellations It's called pareidolia. Here's a really great post on the subject: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... lia-poser/

 

[robnissen]

rob, I think you're just seeing the Virgin Mary in the picture There may be some structure there, but it really doesn't look like anything very significant above random; patterns appear in random distributions all the time, just look at our constellations It's called pareidolia. Here's a really great post on the subject: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... lia-poser/

Shocker, I don't agree. There are clearly less superstructures in the NW portion than in the SW portion (there is no analog to the massive Horologum SC in the NW) and clearly less superstructures in the SE than the NE. Now, if you are saying that is just random variance, that is possible. Like I said, I don't know what it means, but there does appear to be many more superstructures in the plane running from the SW to NE. And it is also coincidental that the MW appears to be more or less moving in that plane.

 

[MeteorWayne]

The title of this topic is incorrect, it is not a supergalaxy, it is a supercluster of galaxies. There's a vast diffence between the two.

I really don't understand what the point of this topic is.

Is the Shapley Supercluster big? It certainly seems so.

I don't understand the significance of the "arm" comment in the OP. Can you explain, bjorkstrand?

The second post (with the youtube) confirms that it is big.

The third post link confirms it is big.

Are you trying to say something here, or just letting us know the supercluster is big? That's pretty cool by itself.

As for the statement that "Perhaps the shapley 8 supergalaxy goes around quasar 3C273." The Universe just doesn't work like that. A quasar is an individual galaxy, one of probably hundreds of thousands in the supercluster. The cluster would not "go around" a particular galaxy, but the individual galaxies would orbit the center of mass of the whole supercluster, just as tha sun and planets orbit the center of mass of the solar system, and the black hole and stars in the Milky Way orbit the center of mass of the galaxy.

MW ( )

 

[ramparts]

rob, I think you're just seeing the Virgin Mary in the picture There may be some structure there, but it really doesn't look like anything very significant above random; patterns appear in random distributions all the time, just look at our constellations It's called pareidolia. Here's a really great post on the subject: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... lia-poser/

Shocker, I don't agree. There are clearly less superstructures in the NW portion than in the SW portion (there is no analog to the massive Horologum SC in the NW) and clearly less superstructures in the SE than the NE. Now, if you are saying that is just random variance, that is possible. Like I said, I don't know what it means, but there does appear to be many more superstructures in the plane running from the SW to NE. And it is also coincidental that the MW appears to be more or less moving in that plane.

Alright, just to be completely fair, the universe does have large scale structure and it's possible we're looking at a filament here. I'm not trying to convince you there's definitely nothing, just that we can't draw anything conclusive at all from this picture. Being a good scientist If you published that one image in a paper and said "look! There's a lot more galaxies on that one plane, something's up," you'd be laughed out of town (of course, doing the requisite statistical analysis for a paper would pretty well show that there's nothing significant, anyway).

Anyway. It's very hard to count "superstructures" as you call them, since they're not very well-defined, but if I do the naïve thing and just count blobs, then on the bottom-left to top-right line (call it Line A), I count about 18. On the bottom-right to top-left line (Line B), I count about 14. If you count things which have names listed on the figure, then in the central area (which is common to both lines) there are a bunch, and then on Line A there's about 3 outside the center (Hercules, Horologum, Corona-Borealis) and on Line B there's 2 (Capricornus and Sextans). If I'm generous, I'll give Line A Shapley too. Then it has 4. Two more than Line A.

So you're talking about Line B having two, three, four more superclusters of ill-defined blobs or whatever than Line A. That's just not statistically significant. A random distribution of objects will not mean that no patterns appear.

Again, please read the post I linked to - I didn't link to it because I'm lazy, I linked to it because the images at the beginning of it are really helpful. Imagine you took a small slice of the random dots image in that post. It would be so easy to find a pattern there like the one you find here.

 

[bjorkstrand]

You people have got blinkers on. There is a quasar galaxy out there. Find it. Now.

Jim