Chapter 28, Problem 25E

The simulated box of galaxy filaments and superclusters shown in Figure 28.29 stretches across 1 billion light-years. If you were to make a scale model where that box covered the core of a university campus, say 1 km, then how big would the Milky Way Galaxy be? How far away would the Andromeda galaxy be in the scale model?

Figure 28.29 Growth of Large-Scale Structure as Calculated by Supercomputers. The boxes show how filaments and superclusters of galaxies grow over time, from a relatively smooth distribution of dark matter and gas, with few galaxies formed in the first 2 billion years after the Big Bang, to the very clumpy strings of galaxies with large voids today. Compare the last image in this sequence with the actual distribution of nearby galaxies shown in Figure 28.21. (credit: modification of work by CXC/MPE/V.Springel)