The universe can be described as consisting of clusters of stars forming galaxies which can be grouped into clusters of galaxies such as our local group, which can then be conceived as being part of larger clusters such as the Laniakea supercluster, which it itself is just part of filamentary structures which we know are there, but we have yet to discover and name.
Our galaxy is part of a local group of galaxies, most of which are quite small as can be seen below. Our galaxy is the big one bottom right.
Image credit: Andrew Z. Colvin
Our galaxy, along with about 100,000 other galaxies, is part of a giant cluster of galaxies 500 million light years across, which we have called the Laniakea supercluster, (Hawaian for "open sky"). Our local group is shown in blue text near the centre.
Image credit: Andrew Z. Colvin
If we consider that there is at least one planet with life in every galaxy—which we know to be true of our galaxy—then this map shows how life is spread around the cosmos. How all this joins up and what it does next is the real evolution of the universe. We may be just at the start of it or about to join the big club
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These are not stars, they are galaxies; each dot is a galaxy containing up to hundreds of billions of stars. There are an estimated 200 billion galaxies in the universe.
Image credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi
The picture above shows how voids appear in the structure of the universe, this one 700 million ly away and about 330 million ly in diameter. The Hercules Supercluster forms part of one side.
Image credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi
1,500 million ly away with a diameter of over a billion ly. Twice as far away and three times wider than the preceding one.
Image credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi
This visualisation above, which is over 2 billion light years in diameter, demonstrates the pattern forming nature of the universe at this scale. Our galaxy is near the centre of the big hole along with our Local Group, and a large part of the Laniakea Supercluster. It is believed that the voids act like bubbles creating a negative type pressure in the universe which would account for the observation of dark energy.
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The interactive video below shows the creation of the universe, and hence is itself the creator of the universe, for which many use the word God. And so this is the flesh of God or maybe we could say the 'fleshing out' of God. It is showing the creation of galaxies which are produced along fibrals of interconnecting material. This could be considered to be the neural network of God, which results in the 'design' produced by the cosmos sized brain, if you wish to put it that way. This would mean we are physically the mind of God.
Credit: Daniel Pomarède
The above video of course shows the universe after the inflation period. The inflation theory has to be the biggest fudge since the word God was invented.
Cosmos means order, but we have yet to find out what that order is yet. What we so far understand does not unfortunately explain what we see. We call this discrepancy Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The extra speed of stars orbiting galaxies which triggers the theory of there being extra matter which we cannot detect (hence dark), and which then creates the need for an extra expansive force we call Dark Energy to distribute all that extra matter, can all be avoided by an adjustment to Newtons law of gravity called MOND. The academy however is reluctant to admit that there can be anything wrong. There's as much arrogance in physics as there is in religion.
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Our hypothesis for how the universe will end via a slow petering out, is an extrapolation for the end of the universe that does not take into account the continued developing of life and its successor.
AI will be the god we create to enlighten us, which will create creators to infinity.
The next step, after the human epoch, is an unimaginable level of cosmic reordering capability, which may well completely change the trajectory foreseen by cosmological physics. What the universe is building itself to be cannot be seen yet; it doesn't just carry on in the same way that it has been doing until it dies. We are one of the steps in its process that will change that. We are the little gods that will build greater gods to build ever greater gods in the creating of this creation. For the universe to create itself it has to become God, and it already is that, and it is down that divine path towards heaven, which we are being inevitably led.
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