• Miguel Aragon is a computational physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he studies the large-scale structure of the universe, galaxy formation, machine learning, data mining, and visualization.
• The Milky Way is not special in itself, but its location is what makes it special. It is located near the center of a cosmological wall, a flat association of galaxies that forms a membrane between cosmological voids.
• The universe looks like a sponge, with cosmological walls, filaments, and clusters. Clusters are the densest parts of the universe, and walls are the least dense.
• The Milky Way is strangely large for living in a wall, and its velocity dispersion is 10 times lower than what is expected. This has been considered a mystery.
• Miguel Aragon has explored the possibility that the fact that the Milky Way is so massive in this wall may have helped the development of life.
Published February 7, 2023
Visit Nautilus to read Brian Gallagher’s original post What Makes the Milky Way Special?
