Local Structure and How We Came to Be

我们的家园银河系和我们绕轨道运行的邻居仙女座星系形成了一个星系群的中心，这个星系群相距约300万光年，被称为本星系群。直到最近，似乎可以通过孤立地研究当地群体来获得我们过去的相对完整的图景。然而，现在我们知道，这个群仅仅是一个高度扁平的结构的质量集中，被称为局部薄片，它向各个方向延伸到2000万光年。在仔细绘制了星表中的星系是如何组织的之后，申请人发现本星系群的形成和演化与这个环境是紧密相连的。这项提议的研究旨在更好地了解本表所代表的东西，以及银河系是如何占据它目前相当特殊的位置的。除了继续研究本地表外，申请人还将通过观测和模拟来寻找和研究更大宇宙中的类似物。除了了解我们所在的物质池的性质和起源外，还将深入了解什么过程界定了银河系的质量，银河系如何成为双星中的一员，银河系及其邻近星系如何开始旋转，我们发现自己所在的结构是否稳定，以及随着宇宙膨胀，这种结构在什么条件下发展。最终，这项研究将使我们更清楚地了解我们在宇宙中的独特性，以及我们是如何形成的。

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.