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Superclusters and the large‐scale structure of the Universe

OCT 01, 1983

DOI: 10.1063/1.2915311

David J. Helfand

From the beginning of this century, study of the origin and evolution of the Universe has been informed by the Cosmological Principle: The Universe is homogeneous and isotropic. On the largest observable scale, that of the blackbody cosmic background radiation, this statement has been confirmed to a high degree of accuracy; spatial inhomogeneities in the temperature of the background radiation are less than 1 part in 104. On the human scale, the Principle is patently absurd. A question of considerable current interest is to ascertain on what scale the postulate breaks down. Observers have recently been working hard on mapping structure on scales of 106 to 3×108 light years, and theorists have been exploiting the increasingly important connections between particle physics and cosmology in an attempt to understand how these structures come to be.

This Content Appeared In
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Volume 36, Number 10

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