Abstract
The view of the universe reveals a hierarchical system of structures. Stars are grouped in giant star clusters: galaxies, involving the most prominent star formation regions in their molecular clouds, and stellar associations such as open and globular clusters. A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and dark matter. Galaxies form clusters of progressively growing size, while galactic clusters form much larger superclusters of galaxies which are not uniformly distributed in the universe. This nonuniform distribution of clusters of galaxies forms a more ordered structure composed of walls and voids, which is called the Cosmic Web and is regarded as the remnants of fluctuations in the matter of the expanding universe after its origin (the Big Bang).
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Notes
- 1.
The idea that the bright band in the night sky known as the Milky Way might consist of distant stars was first proposed by the Greek philosopher Democritus (450–370 BC). Actual proof that the Milky Way consists of a huge number of faint stars came in 1610 with the telescopic observations of Galileo Galilei.
- 2.
1TeV (one teraelectron volt) is equal to 1012 eV; 1 EeV is equal to 1018 eV.
- 3.
The virial theorem relates the average over time of the total kinetic energy of a stable mechanical system consisting of N particles (in this case, galaxies), bound by potential forces, with the total potential energy of the system. Its technical definition was introduced by Rudolf Clausius in 1870.
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Marov, M.Y. (2015). The Structure of the Universe. In: The Fundamentals of Modern Astrophysics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8730-2_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8730-2_10
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