“The distribution of galaxies is clumpy on all scales, ranging from binaries, triples, and multiples, through groups containing a few and a hundred galaxies, to rich clusters with thousands of members, masses up to 1015±1M☉, and diameters of the order of 10 Mpc. The latter have been discussed by Neta A. Bahcall in a preceding volume of this series. The clusters are at the end of the scale of the more or less regular structures in the Universe.”

—  Jan Oort

[Superclusters, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 21, 1, 373–428, 1983, 10.1146/annurev.aa.21.090183.002105] (quote from p. 373)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The distribution of galaxies is clumpy on all scales, ranging from binaries, triples, and multiples, through groups con…" by Jan Oort?
Jan Oort photo
Jan Oort 5
Dutch astronomer 1900–1992

Related quotes

“The concordance model of cosmology, ΛCDM, provides a satisfactory description of the evolution of the universe and the growth of large scale structure. Despite considerable effort, this model does not at present provide a satisfactory description of small scale structure and the dynamics of bound objects like individual galaxies. In contrast, MOND provides a unique and predictively successful description of galaxy dynamics, but is mute on the subject of cosmology. … it is far from obvious that the mass spectrum of galaxy clusters or the power spectrum of galaxies can be explained in MOND, two things that ΛCDM does well. Critical outstanding issues are the development of an acceptable relativistic parent theory for MOND, and the reality of the non-baryonic dark matter of ΛCDM. Do suitable dark matter particles exist, or are they a modern aether?”

Stacy McGaugh (1964) American astronomer

A Tale of Two Paradigms: the Mutual Incommensurability of LCDM and MOND, Stacy McGaugh, 29 Apr 2014, updated 17 May 2014 http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7525,

Lawrence M. Krauss photo

“There's a loophole if you weigh galaxies and clusters because you're weighing the total amount of energy around galaxies. What if there's energy where galaxies aren't? What is where galaxies aren't? Nothing.”

Lawrence M. Krauss book A Universe from Nothing

"Lawrence Krauss: A Universe from Nothing" (2031)
Source: 23:32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sKeycH3bE&t=1412s

Jan Oort photo

“There exists also another type of galaxy agglomeration. These have diameters between roughly one and ten times those of large clusters, but have much smaller densitities; they are usually irregular, with patchy density variations and no central concentration. The larger and most conspicuous of these agglomerations may contain several clusters, which explains why they have been given the name "superclusters." In their longer dimensions, crossing times exceed the age of the Universe. They are thus unrelaxed. Unrelaxed apperance, together with large size, might be taken as a definition of superclusters.”

Jan Oort (1900–1992) Dutch astronomer

(quote from p. 373)

John D. Barrow photo

“What Hubble discovered was the expansion of the universe…. We are not expanding. Nor is Brooklyn. Nor is earth. Nor is the solar system. Nor, in fact, is the Milky Way galaxy. Nor even those aggregates of thousands of galaxies that we call "galaxy clusters." These collections of matter are bound together by chemical and gravitational forces between their constituents—forces that are stronger than the force of expansion.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

The Origin of the Universe (1997)

Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“The Hindus thronged in clusters after clusters and groups after groups and were glorified by the glory of Islam. And likewise to this day of ours, they come from far and wide, embrace Islam, and Jizyah is off from them.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Firoz Shah Tughluq, FuthuHât-i Firozshâhi, ed. by Shaikh Abdur Rashid, Aligarh, 1954, pp. 16-17. Quoted from Harsh Narain, (1990). Jizyah and the spread of Islam.
Quotes from the Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi

“More complicated, but still a placid environment, is that which can be characterized in terms of clustering: goals and noxiants are not randomly distributed but band together in certain ways. This may be called the placid, clustered environment.”

Fred Emery (1925–1997) Australian psychologist

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 28-29.

Ernest Cline photo

“Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

“Galaxies are observed to be simple systems following laws that result from scale-invariant dynamics which do not emanate from the haphazard merging history of halos of exotic dark matter.”

Pavel Kroupa (1963) Australian astrophysicist

Do astronomical data contradict the existence of dynamically relevant cold or dark matter? (seminar talk at Columbia U. Astronomy Department), Pavel Kroupa, 16 Oct. 2014 http://www.astro.columbia.edu/event?eid=185,

Clifford D. Simak photo

“This is the core of the galaxy," Horseface said. "This is the very center of everything there is. A huge black hole eating up the galaxy. The end of everything.”

Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity

Highway of Eternity (1986)

George Gamow photo

“If the expansion of the space of the universe is uniform in all directions, an observer located in anyone of the galaxies will see all other galaxies running away from him at velocities proportional to their distances from the observer.”

George Gamow (1904–1968) Russian-American physicist and science writer

Source: The Creation of the Universe (1952), p. 31

Related topics