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Finding Our Place in the Universe: How We Discovered Laniakea - the Milky Way's Home (Mit Press) Hardcover – May 21, 2019

by Helene Courtois (Author), Nikki Kopelman (Translator)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 36 ratings
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How a team of researchers, led by the author, discovered our home galaxy's location in the universe.

You are here: on Earth, which is part of the solar system, which is in the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is within the extragalactic supercluster Laniakea. And how can we pinpoint our location so precisely? For twenty years, astrophysicist Hélène Courtois surfed the cosmos with international teams of researchers, working to map our local universe. In this book, Courtois describes this quest and the discovery of our home supercluster.

Courtois explains that Laniakea (which means “immense heaven” in Hawaiian) is the largest galaxy structure known to which we belong; it is huge, almost too large to comprehend—about five hundred million light-years in diameter. It contains about 100,000 large galaxies like our own, and a million smaller ones. Writing accessibly for nonspecialists, Courtois describes the visualization and analysis that allowed her team to map such large structures of the universe. She highlights the work of individual researchers, including portraits of several exceptional women astrophysicists—presenting another side of astronomy. Key ideas are highlighted in text insets; illustrations accompany the main text.

The French edition of this book was named the Best Astronomy Book of 2017 by the astronomy magazine Ciel et espace. For this MIT Press English-language edition, Courtois has added descriptions of discoveries made after Laniakea: the cosmic velocity web and the Dipole and Cold Spot repellers. An engaging account of one of the most important discoveries in astrophysics in recent years, her story is a tribute to teamwork and international collaboration.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    184 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    The MIT Press
  4. Publication date
    May 21, 2019
  5. Dimensions
    5.69 x 0.68 x 8.31 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0262039958
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0262039956
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A luminous behind-the-scenes record of a two-decade astrophysical feat.—Nature—

This identification of Laniakea is a tour de force, and Courtois' account gives it life.

—Times Higher Education—

About the Author

Hélène Courtois is a French astrophysicist specializing in cosmography. She is Professor and Vice President at the University of Lyon 1 and the director of a research team at the Lyon Institute of Nuclear Physics. She received the 2018 Scientist of the Year Award from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for her international influence. She is featured in the 2019 documentary Cosmic Flows: The Cartographers of the Universe by CPB Films.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press (May 21, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 184 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262039958
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262039956
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.69 x 0.68 x 8.31 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 36 ratings

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
36 global ratings

Top review from the United States

MBZ
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2019
Verified Purchase
Gave as a gift...great feedback
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Prodipto
3.0 out of 5 stars Good job done
Reviewed in India on October 25, 2021
Verified Purchase
The author has tried her best in positing the location of our cosmological home in relation to the surroundings. However, she has taken on an unnecessary gender bias throughout the narrative. Nevertheless, it's a standard piece of work which will provide for a satisfactory reading. The author would have done better to hike up the technical details in the book by a wee bit amount and that would, in my opinion, would make it a complete treatise
One person found this helpful
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Luis Rodríguez Caba
5.0 out of 5 stars Nuestro lugar en el Cosmos
Reviewed in Spain on October 11, 2019
Verified Purchase
Un mapa es la mejor manera de representar nuestra situación en un momento dado, siempre ha sido así a lo largo del deambular de la humanidad, ahora toca saber donde nos encontramos en el Cosmos, o por lo menos una idea aproximada. En este magnífico libro la autora, astrofísica, relata su investigación en su fascinante viaje para lograrlo, dando al lector la posibilidad de imaginar cuan enorme es el Universo y lo maravilloso de poder descubrirlo. Profusamente ilustrado. Laniakea es nuestro hogar.
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Dorset Stevie
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2019
Verified Purchase
Really great book.
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gordonsmiley
3.0 out of 5 stars A decent work, albeit one which suffers from unnecessary gender bias.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2019
Verified Purchase
This is a pleasant and interesting summary of the Cosmicflows research programme, an effort to map the distribution and motion of galaxies and clusters in our local cosmic neighbourhood. It is, however, a rather short book, and lacks the depth of other works in the genre. For example, JR Gott's recent work 'The Cosmic Web', is far more informative. For a semi-popular introduction to cosmology, one would also do better to read Jean-Pierre Luminet's work, 'The Wraparound Universe'.

Courtois' work also suffers from the type of gender bias which is increasingly de rigueur. The role of numerous men in the field is suppressed, and the work of several women is amplified. In particular, portraits are written of five female astronomers. "This recognition," write Courtois, "is meant to illustrate that neither place of birth or gender matters."

Clearly, however, all five are white females, so these portraits simply serve to emphasise that place of birth really does matter. There are no black women, Islamic women, or Asian women here, so far from signalling a new era of diversity and equality, it suggests simply that one group of affluent, white, middle-class professionals is in the process of replacing another group in a position of privilege, power and status.
8 people found this helpful
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