Local Structure and How We Came to Be

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Our home galaxy the Milky Way and our orbiting neighbour Andromeda form the heart of a collection of galaxies about 3 million lights years across known as the Local Group. Until recently, it appeared that a relatively complete picture of our past could be gained by studying the Local Group in isolation. However, it is now known that the Group is merely a mass concentration in a highly flattened structure, known as the Local Sheet, which extends in all directions out to 20 million light years. After carefully mapping out how galaxies in the Sheet are organized, the applicant has discovered that the formation and evolution of the Local Group was integrally connected to this environment. The proposed research is aimed at acquiring a better understanding of what the Local Sheet represents, and how the Milky Way came to occupy its present rather special place within it. Besides continuing studies of the Local Sheet, the applicant will seek out and study analogues in the greater universe, both observationally and through simulations. In addition to learning about the nature and origin of the pool of matter in which we lie, insights will be gained into what processes delimited the mass of the Milky Way, how the Milky Way became a member of a binary, how the Milky Way and its neighbours started spinning, whether the structure in which we find ourselves is stable, and under what conditions that structure developed as the universe expanded. In the end, the research will yield a clearer picture of the uniqueness of our place in the universe and how we came to be.