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Say Goodbye to Virgo…

By esiegel on March 13, 2008.

Aaah, the Virgo cluster. A huge cluster of hundreds of galaxies, and our closest large neighbor in the Universe. People have known for a long time that although Virgo is still redshifting away from us, it isn't quite as fast as we would expect from the Hubble expansion rate of the Universe. Does this mean that we're gravitationally bound to it, and some day, we'll move into this dee-luxe apartment in the sky?

Nope. Dark energy is here to push it away from us, and we'll unfortunately see this bright neighbor recede farther and farther from us, until it disappears from our sight. So say your farewells to Virgo, because in 100 billion years, it'll be gone forever.

And while you're around, check out this week's Carnival of Space over at Observations from Missy's Window. Lots of good stuff, as always!

Tags
dark energy
cluster
dark
energy
expansion
Hubble
hubble expansion
redshift
virgo
virgo cluster

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