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March 28, 2019 41 mins

Planets, stars, galaxies, clusters, then what? What defines a "thing" and how big can they get?

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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, Daniel, you know, sometimes I'm really amazed about how
small we are compared to the entire planet Earth. Like
we're tiny compared to this giant ball of rock we're
standing on it. It's true, we are really small compared
to the Earth. But then on the other hand, the
Earth is tiny compared to like the other planets. But
even the biggest planet is dwarf by the size of

(00:29):
the Sun in our Solar system. Yeah, the stuff in
the Solar System is just the Sun and the Sun.
Our Sun is not even one of the bigger stars
out there. It's like a mini star, right, Yeah, there
are some moongo stars out there, and then of course,
like all the stars together, the galaxy is just enormous
compared to like our Solar system. Yeah, and as big

(00:49):
as the galaxy is, it's really just one little tiny
drop in the vast ocean of galaxies to our billions
of galaxies out there, right, But the galaxies aren't just
an ocean. There's really interesting structures there which get bigger
and bigger and bigger. There are things bigger than galaxies.
Oh yeah, the galaxies are just tiny dots in the end.

(01:12):
It's fascinating actually, because it gets bigger and bigger, and
then it stops and at some point there isn't anything bigger.
There is actually the biggest thing in the universe. That's right,
and it's not my ego. I am and I'm Daniel.

(01:45):
Welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained the universe
in which we tackled the small and today the very
very large things in the universe. That's right to be
on the podcast, we're going to ask the question, what
is the biggest thing in the universe? UNIVERSEI universe, that's right.

(02:11):
I thought this is a pretty fun idea. Like the
universe is big, but it's mostly empty, right, Like most
of the of the the stuff in the universe is
just emptiness. It's space. Right, it took an average chunk
of the universe, it would mostly be pretty empty. Um,
but it's also filled with really big, big things. You know.
I love this, this the contrast in the scales between

(02:32):
the different stuff in the universe, right. Yeah, And it's
all about context, right, Like something that you think is big,
like you know, the empire, state building, it's big, but
it's only sort of big in in a certain context,
in a certain scale. Exactly you can always zoom out
from wherever you are, and whatever you were amazed at
how big it was then just becomes a tiny dot

(02:53):
and there's some other new structure. You're like, wow, look
at that. Look how big America is, or look how
big you know the world is. Look how big the
Solar system is. It's incredible how many different scales the
universe operates on, right, Right, because it could have been different, Right.
It could have been like the universe is just a
bunch of rocks. At each rock as a meter in length,
and that's it, and there's no structure, and they're not organized,

(03:15):
they just sort of distributed through the universe. Right. It
could have been like that, just like a haze of rocks, right,
in which case you would only be able to say
that the biggest thing in the universe is like a
one meter rock. That's right. Yeah. But the universe seems
to like to organize. I mean, I don't want to
say like obviously in a literal way, because the universe
doesn't like or dislike anything, But the universe does tend

(03:37):
to organize stuff right into bigger and bigger objects and whatever.
It's done organizing something that it groups those together into
objects and grew those together. Right, So it's pretty amazing
what it's managed to accomplish and only fourteen billion years.
And so these structures of the universe keep getting bigger
and bigger and bigger forever or does it at some
point stop? Yeah, so that's what we're gonna dig into today.

(03:59):
It turns out that there is the biggest thing in
the universe. There's a point above which there is no
more organization. Everything is just sprinkled evenly through the universe.
So the question is what is the biggest thing in
the universe. That's right, somebody something out there currently reigns
Supreme is the biggest thing in the universe. Yeah, that's

(04:19):
a pretty impressive title, right. That's not one something that
you can just pick up any day. It takes billions
of years to work up to it. You've gotta train,
you gotta practice, you know, you gotta afternoons, endeavor, lift weights,
make stars. I was thinking more like, eat a lot
of pizza, you know this kind of stuff. You gotta
gather masks here. We're not trying to lose it, right,
the biggest thing in the universe. Yeah, so we were

(04:41):
wondering how many people out there knew the answer to
this question what is the biggest thing in the universe?
And I think, Daniel, you sort of imagine that most
people would say that galaxies are the biggest thing, right, Yeah.
I actually started out asking people just what's the biggest
thing in the universe because I was thinking about you know,
organizational stuff like groups of things, solar systems, galaxies. But

(05:03):
the first answers I got were mostly about like, you know,
biggest stars and stuff. So then I started asking a
slightly different question, which is like, do you think the
galaxies are organized in any way or they just sort
of sprinkled evenly through the universe. So we got a
variety of answers. Yeah. So as usually went out there
into the streets of you see Irvine or the pathways
you see Irvine, and you ask people this question. The

(05:25):
very beautifully cultivated Orange County campus of you see Irvine, which,
by the way, if you haven't visited, really is gorgeous,
a little smart and beautiful people, right, that's right, everybody
down here is smart and beautiful. Exactly Here's what people
had to say. Um, I think it would be the song.
I think as it has like the strongest impact on

(05:48):
a lot of the different names, Thanks very much. I know,
I guess a lot bigger, but I don't know like
terms the galaxy that goes No, I don't guard Okay,
I don't know that. I know it's usually referred to
as like planetary neighborhoods, so that could be groupings of
multiple galaxies, but I don't know the term for it. Okay,

(06:13):
it's just like open space, you know, it's like our universe,
and then a larger uh I'm not sure what it's called,
but a larger area. And then there's more universes like trillions,
and you know, almost an infinite amount of like universes. Okay,
I'm not sure, all right, sees most people say the galaxies, right,
someone said the Sun was the biggest thing in the universe. Um,

(06:36):
you know they were probably weren't thinking very big, but Gussies,
I think most people think about right, like, there's nothing
bigger out there than a galaxy. Yeah, And you know,
I think it's interesting to compare that to sort of
historical understandings of what people thought. Remember, like a hundred
years ago, people looked out into the sky and they
saw stars, like, okay, there are stars out there, just
like there's our star. And they thought for a time

(07:00):
that the universe was just a bunch of stars sprinkled
through the universe, um, that there was no organization. To them, right,
that that was all there was. Basically, that the universe
was one big galaxy. So to them, a star was
the biggest thing in the universe. Yeah, a star, or
you could say a solar system, but that's really a
small difference. So to them, a star was the biggest
thing in the universe. And then about a hundred years

(07:21):
ago they looked at some of those really faint smears
in the sky and discover that those aren't far away stars.
They're actually far away galaxies right, whole other clusters of stars.
And that has been a mind blowing moment because they
realized one that stars do form structure, right, they turned
into galaxies, and to that there are other ones right
in the universe has lots of galaxies in it, right,

(07:44):
that they're not a sort of spread out evenly in
the universe. They cluster into things. Yeah, yeah, exactly, they
formed these big structures of galaxies. And so now people,
most of the folks we talked to and maybe the
people out there listening, probably imagine that the universe is
just sprinkled evenly with galaxies. Right. It's the next logical
assumption that instead of just stars sprinkled everywhere, it's just

(08:06):
galaxy sprinkled everywhere. So I think that's probably what people think.
They've heard of galaxies, they haven't heard of anything bigger,
so they just assume the universe is evenly sprinkled with galaxies. Right. Well,
let's think philosophically here for a second. Is a galaxy
a thing? You know, technically is just made up of stars?
What makes something a thing? What makes something a thing? Yeah?
I think there must be a lot of philosophers who

(08:29):
debated this, right, what is thingness? You know, it's probably
a whole like um branch of philosophy about defining objects
and all sorts of stuff, and they have seminars and
argue about it and smoke banana peels and stuff. Um.
But from the physics point of view, I think we
can answer that and say that a thing is something
that is gravitationally bound, so that it is essentially held

(08:51):
together by gravity. Right, it's something that holds together. I
was thinking, like that's a good definition of a thing,
like you and I were made up of lillions and
trillions of molecules and atoms um and and and there's
they're sort of spread out a lot, like there's just
a lot of space between atoms, right, and nuclei of atoms,
but generally were they were sort of held together into

(09:14):
this thing that that I call Rhan and for you
the thing that you call Daniel. Okay, are you talking
about us individually or us as a pair, because that's
a different question. I'm definitely a thing. You're a thing?
Are we a thing? Is that what you're asking? Are we? Daniel?
Are you? Are you asking me out? This? Is? Are
you doing this? On air? You you raised the question,

(09:34):
you know, like, what's the thing? Are we a thing? So?
Here we are? You know Daniel lare Hey explore their
relationship live on the tape. Well, I mean, I like you, Daniel,
but I would say that I'm a thing and you're
a thing A man. That's cold. That's just the way
the universe operates. Though. If you don't have a strong bond,
then you're not a thing. Right. Well, you know, I
think we're just talking philosophically here, right, I think philosophically

(09:59):
would not philosophically or even scientifically, I think a thing
is something that holds itself together. And like, is a
solar system a thing? Right? Well, yeah, the Solar system
is a thing because the Earth doesn't want to have
a different path than the Sun. Right, It goes around
the Sun. It moves together as a single object. It's
bound together gravitationally, just like maybe an electron, you know,

(10:20):
sort of trapped going around a nuclei of an atom. Together,
they make a thing, which is an atom. Yeah, exactly,
So you could say, like the Solar system is a thing,
and so a galaxy that's made out of a whole
bunch of solar systems you could also call it a
thing because all of those galaxies, all of those solar systems,
are being held together. M And also like you and

(10:42):
the Earth are a thing, right because you're held down
to the Earth and together you form an object and
you know you have the same fate as the Earth
gravitationally speaking, um, you move around the Sun together, right,
So collectively we are all a thing with the Earth, right,
And so yeah, I think that's a pretty good definition.
So when we say a thing is like when we
ask a question, what's the biggest thing in the universe.

(11:02):
We're kind of asking, like, what's the biggest structure or
what's the biggest thing that you can say is being
held together differently than other things in the universe. That's right,
the thing that has thingness that is also the biggest. Okay,
so that's a good thing. We got that way. Um,
I think we've thinked about thinking enough. Yes, all right,

(11:24):
let's get into the size of things, like the scale
of us and the Earth and the solar system. But
first let's take a quick break. All right, we're talking

(11:44):
about the bigness of things and how what's the biggest
thing in the universe? And let's start. Let's start talking
about the size of things. Let's start here on Earth,
Like how big is earth? Daniel? You know, how big
are you? How big? I'm a I'm a big you
mean like like my largeness or larget no for scale?

(12:05):
You know, like, um, how many kilometers tall are you? Orhand?
Oh how many kilometers? Oh boy, I am about uh folks,
you're hearing him, do math point? Oh oh one eight
kilometers tall? All right, that's not a lot of kilometers.

(12:26):
I mean, you're you're a tall guy. It turns out,
but that's actually not a lot of kilometers right in comparison,
like the Earth, right is thousands of kilometers in width,
it's about eight thousand miles in diameter. Yeah, that's right,
which would make it about you know, like fourteen thousand
kilometers in diameter. So compared to the Earth, you're just

(12:46):
like mote, You're like irrelevant. Jude's like negligible, right, which
is incredible. Right, We're like a little speck of dust
next to next to the Earth, which makes me wonder sometimes,
like what's the minimum size for a planet that could
hold life? Right? Is it necessary? Because you know that
book The Little Prince where the guy is this little
guy and he's like on a tiny asteroid, And I

(13:07):
love that because I think it would be really fun
to be alive on a really small astronomical object where
you could like run laps around it or something, right
when you float off at some point of view, were
that much bigger, Yeah, your planet exactly. It's you need
enough gravity not just for you to stay bound to it,
but also to like have an atmosphere if you're not.
If your planet isn't big enough, it can't hold onto

(13:28):
gas on its surface, so you can't breathe. So there
really is some sort of minimum size for a planet
like Mars is probably too small, and you know, it
lost its atmosphere for life as we know it. I mean,
there could potentially be something out there that can live
without an atmosphere, right, yeah, right, you can have an
asteroid which is alive inside of it, like the organization
of the flows of lava, you know, hot rock inside

(13:51):
some some object could be alive, certainly. But yeah, life
as we know you know that lives and breathes and
uses water, liquid water and stuff like that. Probably none
of those things evolved on a planet that we're much
smaller than Earth, right, So the Earth is pretty big.
So then what's the next biggest thing in our Solar system? Well,

(14:12):
if you want to scale up the planets, Jupiter is
about ten times the radius of the Earth, right, which
is huge And you might think only ten times, but
remember that volume goes as radius cubed, right, So if
you're ten times the radius, then you're you know, a
thousand times the volume, which means you could fit a
thousand earths inside Jupiter, which makes Earth like tiny. We're

(14:37):
one one thousands of the size of Jupiter. Yeah, we're
like a rounding error for Jupiter. Right, It's really it's
incredible how small we are compared to Jupiter, Like we
make a good mood to Jupiter. Exactly. I should look
that up. But there might even be moons of Jupiter
that are comparable to the size of Earth. It's amazing.
So this is where it's a math. So, um, I

(14:57):
calculated that the size of the Earth is, as you said,
about four kilometers and radios. You just said it's four
kilometers and radio. Sorry, what's the factor of a thousand
between friends? Watch people Jorges doing math? That's right, don't
trust the cartoon is to do math. Four thousand miles sorry,

(15:20):
four thousand miles. So, but but if the Earth was
the size of a pinhead, like it was the size
of the pin the head in a pin, that means
Jupiter would be about the size of a marble. Wow.
So if Earth really was a spec Jupiter would still
be pretty substantial. Yeah. And by that scale, the Sun,
which is about four thousand miles in radios, would be

(15:44):
about the size of a cantaloup. Wow. I think it's
really pretty interesting that the Earth is one tenth the
radius of Jupiter, which is one tenth the radius of
the Sun. Right right, It's like powers of ten right
all here in our solar system, each one dwarf the next,
you know, like that we are the size that the
Earth to Jupiter ratio is about the same as the

(16:05):
Jupiter sun ratio. Right. The Sun dwarfs Jupiter exactly the
way Jupiter dwarfs us. Like if Jupiter was a bully
pushing us around the playground, and then the Sun just
like trots up, like hey, pick on someone your own size,
you know. Yeah, like you could fit a thousand earth
inside of Jupiter, and you could fit a thousand jupiters
inside the Sun. Yeah. When do some math, that means
you could fit a million earths inside the Sun, right Yeah,

(16:30):
Like we could plunge into the Sun and it wouldn't
even notice. It would be like a little like a
mosquito bite exactly exactly, like a millionth of you. Let's like,
you know, every time you blow your nose, you lose
a millionth of your mass, right, so we're like we're
like a little bit of snot compared to the Sun. Right. Yeah, Okay,
so then if we keep going, if the Earth is

(16:50):
a pinhead, and jupiters are marble, and the sun is
a cantaloupe. Okay, so the right scale would be, uh,
if you if you hold the pin it in your hand,
the sun would be which is a cantalope. You would
have to put it about a hundred feet away. Yeah, yeah,
because not only are these is the sound really big,
but it's really far away, right, Yeah, Like imagine like

(17:13):
holding a pinhead than walking a hundred feet and sending
down a cantalope. That's how far the sun is. Yeah,
all these things, these we think, these things we think
are huge, are dwarfed by just the sheer emptiness of space. Right,
Like take the Earth to Sun relationship, Like most of
that volume is just nothing, right, Yeah, it's incredible, and
it kind of shows you how powerful gravity is at

(17:33):
those skills, right, Like, we go around the Sun. That's
our life, that's how we exist, that's what makes our
existence possible. And yet it's like it's a pinted revolving
around a cantalope a hundred feet away. That's right. Well,
we're glad we're not any closer, right, or we'd be
a pretty toasty pad. Yeah, exactly, um. And then all

(17:54):
of this, of course, is just dwarfed by the galaxy. Right,
if you look at the galaxy, you can't even find Sun.
It's just a tiny thought. How big is the milk Way? Daniel?
The Milky Way is hard to even describe in these units. Right,
we've been talking about miles, and the Earth is thousands
of miles and the Sun's radius is hundreds of thousands
of miles. Right, the milky Way is fifty thou light

(18:16):
gears across. Right, it takes light fifty thousand years to
cross the Milky Way. If you convert that to miles,
it's three times ten to the seventeen miles, So three
and then seventeen zeros. Right, Actually looked up the scientific
prefix for that, because I don't even know. And the
Milky Way is one third of an x a mile

(18:39):
X a mile x a mile. Isn't that pretty cool?
Like a medical condition? I have X mile. I'm so
sorry to hear that. You should get that cream they
have for it. So I did the math on this
one too, Okay, So the Earth is a pinhead and

(19:00):
the Sun is a kind of a hunted feet away.
The galaxy is the size of our Solar system. WHOA,
I thought you were going to say, like a blue
whale or like some other like really delicious food or something.
But the Solar system, that's pretty incredible. Yeah, yeah, it's
about Yeah, it would be about one point when eight
times since the winters. Yeah, that's how big the galaxy is.

(19:22):
So imagine like a pinhead and a kind of loop
in our Solar system. That's how big the galaxy is,
and we are like a tiny thing on that pinhead. Yeah. So,
as we were saying, it just gets dwarfed, right, And
some of you guys out there might be wondering, like, well,
are these things typical, Like are the planets in our
Solar system typically the size you find in planets there's
our sun normal is the milky way, like an average

(19:45):
kind of a galaxy. Um. So we did a big
digging bit of digging there and it turns out that
the biggest planet that they found in any solar system
anywhere is about ten times the size of Jupiter. Right,
So there's a planet out there there that's huge, that's
almost the size of the Sun. Almost the size of
the Sun. Yeah. Um, so that's like a big planet.

(20:07):
That's like a planet that's almost the Sun and of itself. Right,
it's like literally a million times bigger than the earths
around in that order of magnitude when that has a
big honking planet, and stars also get really big. Um,
and stars change also in size in their lifetime, right,
Like our Sun is going to get bigger as it
gets older. It's gonna burn and then the outer layers

(20:29):
are going to get cooler and they're gonna expand. And
we did a whole episode on how the Sun is
going to die. Um. But there are stars out there
right now that are like a thousand or two thousand
times as big as our Sun. Yeah, it's huge. If
you had that in our solar system, it would like
enveloped Saturn, you know, like it would be no room
for for planet inter planets at all. Only be pretty crazy.

(20:51):
So we will be inside the Sun, yeah exactly, We'll
be inside the Sun, and we will be in a
few billion years our Sun will also get huge and
envelop the Earth. Right. Oh, great, stock up on that
fun block hand or rock gets to the other planets. Um.
But there's one other thing that the galaxies are not

(21:11):
just stars with planets around them, right, there's other stuff
and there's the stuff that makes the stars. Right, there's
these huge clouds of gas and dust which are like
the leftovers from blown up solar systems and blown up
stars that eventually coalesced to make these stellar nurseries where
new stars are formed. And those things are really big.
How big are they? They can be like a thousand

(21:34):
to two thousand light years across, right, So that's much
much bigger than any individual star. I mean, this is
where stars are born. Right, there's like fields of stars
being created in these things. But still they're small compared
to the Milky Way. Right, the Milky Way was like
fifty three thousand light years across. The biggest nebula or
gas cloud we've seen is like two thousand light years across.

(21:55):
So so far the galaxy is the biggest thing. But
it's interesting to think that there are objects kind of
in the scale of things between our Sun and the
milk Away Galaxy. I mean, there's bigger stars, bigger planets,
and these clouds of gas that you meet that you
talked about, Yeah, And the wonderful thing about these clouds
is that they look like something that's dynamic, but it's

(22:17):
frozen in time, right, It's like, you know, if you
see a picture of a steam engine and these puffs
of clouds coming up from it, right, it's frozen in time,
but you can tell that there's motion there, right, that
it's like in the middle of chugging and puffing and
boiling and churning. Right, these clouds look the same way,
and they are boiling and churning, but just on very

(22:37):
different time scales. You have to do like a crazy
time lapse, like watch it for a billion years to
see it roiling and toiling and bubbling and all that stuff.
But it is, it's just that on our time scales,
it hardly seems to be moving and and and in
that distance scale because it's a thousand light years across, yeah, exactly.
So it's it really makes you feel insignificant, and it's

(22:58):
really impressive, like how dynamic the universe is. It's just
under a huge distance scales and huge time scales. Right.
It's like if there was a whole civilization that was
birthed and then died in the middle of one puff
of that steam engine, right, and it for it. The
steam cloud was frozen, right, it was hardly moving, you know. Um,

(23:19):
And so that's the way we are with this tiny
dot suspended in the sunbeam around, surrounded by all this crazy,
very slow action. Yeah, and there are stars being born
inside of that like popcorn. Yeah, exactly, exactly, new stars
still being born, exactly. Okay, let's let's um. Let's keep
going and see what the biggest thing in the universe is.

(23:42):
But first let's take another break. All right, we're building
our way up to the biggest thing in the universe,
and so far we've got We've gone from the Earth

(24:03):
to the Solar System, to gas clouds to the Milky
Way galaxy and so a lot of are the people
you talked to on the street thought that galaxies were
the biggest things in the universe. But that's not actually true.
That's right, and they're pretty big, right, And our galaxy
is we said, fifty light years across, and some galaxies
get pretty big to get up to like millions of

(24:25):
light years across, right, Aliens, Galaxies can come all different sizes. Yeah,
it would take you millions of years, going at the
speed of light just to go from one side of
that galaxy to the next. Yeah. So if you like
forgot your lunch at home and you work on the
other side of the galaxy. You like, forget it, man,
that's a ten million um a year round trip. Forget it.

(24:45):
That's right. The commune is terrible and that's you know,
and that's when there's no traffic. When there's traffic, forget
about it, man. Yeah. Um. But so a lot of
people thought that galaxies are just sprinkled everywhere through the universe.
But you know, galaxies have been around for while, and
so what's going to happen when you have stuff hanging
out for a while is that gravity is going to
start to pull it together. Right. It's not some perfectly

(25:09):
smooth there's slight differences and there's a little bit more
mass here, a little bit more mass there, and so
over billions of years, galaxy will start to pull stuff together.
And that's exactly what happened. They started to kind of
self organize, yeah, or as you would say, form a thing. Right.
And so the next level up from galaxies that we
found that galaxies are organized into these things we're not

(25:30):
very cleverly called clusters, right, So galaxy clusters like nut clusters,
like yeah, I think, um, I think again, you should
have had a snack before we had this, before we
recorded this episode. A galaxy, a galaxy cluster usually contains
about fifty galaxies and it's like five or ten million

(25:50):
light years across, and they can remember a galaxy itself
is like, you know, fifty or a hundred thousand light
years across. So this is much bigger than one. Galaxies
has fifty galaxies which are themselves pretty far apart. But
they are organized, right, They're not just like it's not
an arbitrary assignment. They're they're orbiting each other. It's like
a separate group of galaxies that interacting and kind of

(26:13):
holding together, separate from other groups of galaxies. That's right.
They're all orbiting the center of mass of this cluster, right,
the same way everything the Solar System is organized is
orbiting the center of mass or the Solar system, which
happens to be the Sun, and everything in the galaxy
is orbiting the center of the galaxy. Everything in this
cluster of galaxies is orbiting the center, which doesn't necessarily

(26:34):
have anything in it at this point, right. So that's
a that's the next biggest thing or is a cluster
of galaxy. It's like a structure. It's like a like
if you zoom out far enough, it would look like
a thing would look like a yeah, exactly, like a
blob exactly. And they're separated from other clusters. Right. The
distances between things and the cluster is small compared to

(26:55):
the distances between the clusters. The same way the distances
between the planet's a small compared to the distances between
solar systems. Right, it's like chocolate chips floating in a
cookie dough. Tasty. This is a tasty galaxy reliving in um.
And then you keep going and the clusters themselves are
organized into basically clusters of clusters. Okay, so the cluster

(27:17):
is not the biggest thing. So okay, So if galaxies
have been sprinkled out evenly, you would say galaxies are
the biggest thing in the universe. But they're not. They're
organized the clusters. And if those clusters have been spread
out evenly, you would say that the cluster is the
biggest thing in the universe. But there there's another structor
above clusters, that's right. And you know, this is just
things that people discovered as they looked out into the universe,

(27:39):
and they did sort of the three D mapping, Right,
they're trying to understand like where is stuff around us?
And how is it organized? And as we get better
and better at measuring distance scales and better telescopes, we
can see further out. We can build this sort of
three D map around us. And then we noticed these
these patterns. We noticed that things aren't just distributed, and
so the clusters themselves are organized into clusters of clusters,

(28:00):
which we call superclusters. And I feel like these objects
got like kind of a bad rap, you know, because
cluster is not a very creative name. I mean, the
galaxy is not just called like a star cluster, right,
It's got its own cool name galaxy. Right, But nobody
named nobody named the cluster of galaxies other than cluster
of galaxies, And and somebody named it's superior, a supercluster,

(28:23):
which means the cluster is like not super. It's like
saying this is Daniel is super Daniels. Imagine how I'm
not super. I think you're saying I'm not super. I'm
getting a lot of objection super Daniel. Daniel, there's another Daniel.
I gotta go find the sub Daniel and make me
feel small exactly the under Daniel. What I need really

(28:48):
is a cluster of Daniels. You know that would be
pretty awesome. What is the biggest daniel in the universe?
That's really the cluster today's podcast. Well, let's come up
with the name. Let's you and I Christen clusters of galaxies.
Let's do it. Okay, Well, you're the creative one, go ahead. UM,
I don't know. Um, banana of galaxies, banaxisnaxies, it's a

(29:14):
banaxis of galaxies. That's baxis of galaxies. That that really
rolls off the tongue. That's beautiful. And some multi some
alternate version of the multiversity. Were definitely a poet. Well,
I'm technically the first person, and if there any scientists
out there, you technically have to quote me. Now, when
you refer to these, you should, um, you shouldn't just

(29:38):
reach for the snack that's on your table. You should
go deeper. You should think about, like, you know, Greek
mythology or some sort of you know, historical event or
something to motivate you're like, I think they had bananas
in Greece. Come on, how about the union. Let's give
it a political name, or let's call them the Union
of Galaxies. They're organized there, you go stand together speak

(29:59):
as well and orbit together. Yes we can. So the
galaxies form clusters, and the clusters form superclusters. What does
that mean? So they're like, well, the same way that
you know, stars organized into a galaxy and galaxies organized
into a cluster. Galaxy clusters themselves. You just think of

(30:22):
each of those is like a little dot. Then about
you know, a hundred of those together, which spans about
a hundred million light years across, form what we call
a supercluster. Oh my god, it's giving me a head
of to think about these scales. So um, So this
is a cluster of clusters of galaxies which have billions

(30:43):
of stars, and each star has planets, and each planet
has little might have little people like us exactly. Um.
And so these superclusters, I mean they're enormous. It's hard
to even really think about these distances. You know, a
hundred million light years you mean superbanaxes, reunions, the exactly.
And so that's pretty incredible. And people will figure that out.

(31:05):
They thought, wow, that's pretty big stuff. You know. So
you said there are a hundred million light years across, Yeah,
there are a hundred million light years across. Um. And
so then people started to look to see like, well,
are those organized in some way? Are those the biggest
things in the universe? Yeah? Are those the biggest thing
in the universe. And so that's when people that's when
the real shock arrived, because they started it started to

(31:27):
sort of look like they were just sprinkled evenly. But
then they noticed that in one direction it went on,
superclusters just sort of went on for a long way.
In another direction they stopped, and you know, they're sort
of building this three D one three D picture around us,
and it turns out that we were in sort of
a thick sheet, like there's like a great wall of
superclusters as far as we can see, Like we are

(31:49):
one supercluster sprinkled with a bunch of other superclusters, but
it's not as thick as it is wide. It's organizing
to like a sheet, like a table, Yeah, like a sheet.
And then people start to look like, well, what's in
that spot? Where there when the superclusters run out? Right?
So they built the map further and further and further,

(32:09):
and then they discovered, oh, it's not a sheet of superclusters.
It's more like a bubble, right, And so the superclusters
are organized into these like massive bubbles that surround these
huge voids in which there's nothing. So like the superclusters
of clusters of galaxies form a bubble like they're on

(32:32):
the surface of a bubble. Yeah, and you know, it's
not like very regular bubbles. It's more like there are
these filaments and sheets and empty spaces. They're not like
the bubbles are spherical or anything, but there's it's like, um,
if you zoom out far enough, it's like a froth, right,
It's like and and each um, it's like a froth
of these little bubbles and each bubble the surface of

(32:53):
that bubble, like the thin skin of that bubble is
thousands and thousands of superclusters of galaxies. Oh my god,
it's pretty crazy. And so we live on the on
the edge of some little bubble. And in that void,
I mean, there was voids or billions of light years
across with nothing in them. Nothing nothing, I mean empty space,

(33:14):
which of course is never really empty. Um. And you know,
maybe like one rock got kicked out of a cluster
one day and wandered into those that voids, but essentially
nothing and those um bubbles are about billions of light
years across. There are billions of light years across exactly,
and that's pretty incredible. And then you know that's it. Wait,
so that's that's the biggest thing in the universe. The

(33:36):
bubble of superclusters, of clusters, of galaxies, of stars, of planets,
of people exactly. And if you zoom out far enough
as far as we know, then it just looks smooth.
There's no more organization. Uh, it's just more bubbles. Yeah.
The bubbles are just sprinkled evenly. It's not like they're
the bubbles form circles or form sheets or form groups

(33:58):
or anything like that that we think that they are
just organized. Um, they're just sprinkled there. The universe is frothy, yeah,
and it really is frothy. And the thing I like
thinking about the most is where that froth came from, right, Like,
And it's really it's connected to the first few moments
of the universe. For those of you who remember, like

(34:18):
talking about the Big Bang and the cosmic microwave background.
We've looked back in time also and we've seen the
early few a few moments of the universe, and what
we see there are is froth. Right, It's like quantum
randomness which generated the initial seeds for all the structure
of the universe. That this structure we're talking about, so

(34:39):
little random fluctuations in the early universe lead directly to
these huge structures that we're seeing. Now, Why do we
have a bubble here? Not there? Because there's some random
quantum particle fluctuation fourteen billion years ago at the Big
Bang in a space in a really small space, Yeah, exactly,
and then it got stretched out by inflation and became
the seed of structure in the universe. And that's the

(35:01):
structure we're talking about. So that these bubble sort of
you might say, kind of came first, right, like the
universe biggest thing in the universe was has always been
a bubble. Well, you know, they were there were those
sort of quantum froth. I don't know if you could
really call those bubbles. They're just like areas where there's
more density and less density. But I just want to

(35:21):
make the connection and have people understand it that the
structure and that we see in the universe today was
determined in some sense by that quantum froth that happened
in the early universe. It just scaled up and scaled
up and scaled up, and that's what gives us the
biggest things in the universe. Yeah, exactly, superbnax is bubbles, exactly.

(35:43):
And the fascinating thing is thinking about why there isn't
any bigger structure, Like why don't those bubbles form structure?
I said earlier, like anytime you've got stuff hanging out,
gravity is going to start to organize you, right, And
that's true, but it also it takes a while. Gravity
is not very strong. Remember, it's the weakest force by
orders of magnitude, and so even though it's the dominant

(36:04):
thing in the universe on these scales and these timelines,
it's not very powerful. So it takes a long time,
takes billions of years to form this structure. The way,
do we know for sure that these bubbles and this
froth of super duper clusters, that's that's it, that's the
biggest thing at the universe. We're pretty sure there's nothing bigger.
We're pretty sure we know nothing for sure, But we've
been building this map, this three D map of the universe,

(36:27):
and that's all we see. Yeah, and it could be
that we haven't, you know, just seen far enough. But
we've seen pretty far and it just looks like these
bubbles and filaments and strands and sheets. You know, it's
these superclusters in form these surfaces. But that's about it.
You know, there's no organization to those bubbles or sheets
as far as we know. And I think the reason
is that there just hasn't been enough time. Right. The

(36:49):
universe is old and it's but it's done a lot
in those fourteen billion years. I mean, that's a lot
of galaxies to make on a lot of superclusters to organize,
you know, a lot of bubbles and filaments, rights, but
a lot of bananas. Yeah. And you know, earlier in
the universe there was less structure, right, um, and so
these structures have formed gradually over time. You know, in

(37:09):
the first billion years after the Big Bang, we didn't
have any galaxies, right, and so it takes a while
for these structures to form. So it might be that
you win another fifty billion years and then you make
something else, something new is crowned, is the biggest thing
in the universe, and then we call a new hooree
to give it a silly name after some fruit, you like,
a bigger one, bigger, bigger, I mean, like in the

(37:31):
future billions of years from now, maybe these bubbles will
form into something like a mega bubble or a giant
smiley phace. Who knows it might be. On the other hand,
we've also talked a few times about dark energy. That's
this mysterious force that's pushing everything apart, right, that's creating
new space between galaxies. So that's making that actually harder

(37:52):
to make new structure, because spreading everything out is ripping
everything apart. Exactly, it's ripping everything apart. So it might
just be that we are living in the moment when
we will have the biggest structures ever in the universe,
that this is like a tipping point in it. After this,
things just get shredded and this is like the biggest
we ever got. Like in the in the future, everything
will just be spread out evenly with no discernible structure. Yeah,

(38:15):
it could be right, And that's always weird. When you
come to the realization that you're living in a special moment.
It makes you skeptical. You're like, well, that's sort of
I mean, how could that be. We just we luck
a coincidence, Yeah, exactly, seems like a coincidence. And in
science we don't like coincidences. I mean, they happen, but
every time there's a coincidence, it's an opportunity to ask
why and to maybe get a revealing answer. So, you know,

(38:35):
there's a lot of speculation and a lot we don't know.
It's like every generation thinks that they live in the
peak of their culture. Every generation thinks they have the
best music every exactly just down just downhill from the
kids today. Man, they don't know what good music is.
That's kind of what you're saying. They don't know what
a supercluster is exactly. That's kind of what you're saying.
Is that, well, you're saying we live in peak universal structure,

(38:59):
like things are just kind might be just downhill from here,
and this is the most structure will see ever, Like
these big things in the universe might at some point
kind of get ripped apart and dissolve. Yeah, and I
want to emphasize again this is a lot of this
is speculation because we don't know what the future of
dark energy is, right, and there could be other things
we don't know about how the universe is organized. We're
still really babies when it comes to understanding this stuff.

(39:21):
But that certainly could be we don't see any bigger structure,
and we have reason to think that dark energy is
gonna in That dark energy really could prevent more structure
from being formed. It could even shred the structures we have.
So yeah, we could be living at peak structure. Right. Wow,
So be glad that you're alive right now and you
could look out into the stars and see the biggest
thing in the universe. Well, that's the answer to the

(39:43):
question we set out to talk about, which is the
what is the biggest thing in the universe? And right
now the biggest thing in the universe are these bubbles
of superclusters of galaxies. Yeah, and it also might be
the biggest thing ever in the universe in the infinity
of time. They might the basics exactly in the history

(40:03):
of the universe. In this infinitely long podcast. All right,
so I think we answered the question. Um. I hope
we took you on a fun mental trip from mind
blowing the small to mind blowing the huge and made
you realize where you are in our cosmic neighborhood. We
hope you had a very large time thinking about these

(40:26):
huge scales and Jorges over there doing some math to
figure out how what fruit associates with the cluster of superclusters?
How big would that banana have to be inside of
all if you added up all the bananas you're beating
over your life, how big would that banana be worn it?
It would be a galaxy of potassium. Probably probably all right, everyone,

(40:52):
thank you for listening to this biggest podcast ever. See
you next time. If you still have a question after
listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's

(41:15):
one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Jorge dot com.
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