The Universe

The Universe



Our universe is a large and unimaginable expanse of dust, gas, stars, clouds, galaxies, and life. Distant worlds waiting to be explored by future space craft. But what is the Universe?

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This picture shows the overall structure of our universe.  This is just a small piece, but it is enough to see that matter is organized in strands, or strings. Lets start from the beginning. The Earth revolves around the Sun.  The Sun in turn revolves or circles the center of the galaxy.  Our galaxy is part of a group of galaxies called the Local Group.  The local group of galaxies are all part of a bigger cluster of galaxies called the Virgo Cluster.  Now here is where it gets fun. Millions of galaxy clusters around the universe are strung together like a spiderweb.  If you could look at the entire universe at once it would look like a giant spiderweb, made up of billions of galaxies, and trillions and trillions of stars.

The areas between strands of galaxies are completely empty.  You would have to travel hundreds of miles to find just one atom.