Updates: Astronomy and Rufus Baughn, Nevada Test Site

© 1999 by Linda Moulton Howe

January 10, 1999 -

Astronomy Updates

The American Astronomical Society has been meeting in Austin, Texas this week where they have made it clear that understanding how the universe is structured has become one of the central goals in cosmology. And the puzzles outweigh the answers.

1) First, University of Maine astronomer David Batuski described the largest structures ever seen in the universe. To help understand what the structure looks like, imagine a string of 14 pearls. But each pearl is flattened more like a pancake. Each flattened pearl is actually a cluster of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of galaxies. And within each galaxy are millions of suns.