References > Laniakea: Our home supercluster

Superclusters – regions of space that are densely packed with galaxies – are the biggest structures in the Universe. But scientists have struggled to define exactly where one supercluster ends and another begins. Now, a team based in Hawaii has come up with a new technique that maps the Universe according to the flow of galaxies across space. Redrawing the boundaries of the cosmic map, they redefine our home supercluster and name it Laniakea, which means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian (from Nature Video)

WebLink: YOUTUBE: Laniakea: Our home supercluster

▪It amazing to see how unfathomably vast our “world” is, even though this is only a small part of even our universe. However, imagine this together with uncountable worlds teeming with life, that we are not aware of! This is why the Buddha said not to spend time exploring the details of this “world”. There is no end to it, either spacewise or timewise.

▪But we need to keep in mind that only human minds can even comprehend such things. If we are to be born an animal or worse this kind of thinking is not possible, and we will get trapped in such worlds for unimaginably long times. Thus what we need to do is to take advantage of the brief time we have in this life to comprehend the true nature of ‘this world”, i.e., anicca, dukkha, anatta, and to become free of it.