Astronomers think the Milky Way could be part of a structure much larger than we believed. If that is true, parts of our standard model of the universe may need updates.

For years, scientists have said our galaxy belongs to the Laniakea supercluster. Laniakea is a web of thousands of galaxies that move together because of gravity. A new study published in Nature Astronomy suggests Laniakea may sit inside an even bigger region called a basin of attraction centered toward the Shapley Concentration. They explain in the paper:

“The entire Universe can be considered a patchwork of abutting BoA, just as the terrestrial landscape is separated into watersheds. A BoA is generally not gravitationally bound because the relative motion of distant points within it is usually dominated by cosmic expansion.”

Researchers built this picture by tracking how galaxies drift through space. They studied catalogs of galaxy motions to find where matter gathers and where space is emptier. In a statement on this study, Astronomer R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa said:

“Our universe is like a giant web, with galaxies lying along filaments and clustering at nodes where gravitational forces pull them together. Just as water flows within watersheds, galaxies flow within cosmic basins of attraction. The discovery of these larger basins could fundamentally change our understanding of cosmic structure.”

Simulations suggest the basin of attraction may include several well-known features. The team commented on these structures in their paper, saying:

“Nearby, evidence emerges for a BoA centred in proximity to the highly obscured Ophiuchus cluster that lies behind the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. This BoA may include the so-called Great Attractor region and the entity Laniakea, including ourselves. In the extension […] the Sloan Great Wall and the associated structure are overwhelmingly dominant.”

There is still uncertainty, so the idea remains a strong hint rather than final proof. In a separate statement concerning this paper, Noam Libeskind, an astronomer at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, said:

“It is perhaps unsurprising that the further into the cosmos we look, we find that our home supercluster is more connected and more extensive than we thought. Discovering that there is a good chance that we are part of a much larger structure is exciting. At the moment, it’s just a hint: more observations will have to be made to confirm the size of our home supercluster.”

If future observations confirm this, it will continue to advance and evolve our understanding not just of the universe, but of our place within it.

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