Where Are We in the Universe: Our Cosmic Address

The talk explores our place in the cosmos - starting from the Moon and the outer reaches of the Solar System, all the way to the Oort Cloud. From there, we zoom out to the Milky Way, our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy, the Local Group, the Virgo Supercluster, and the vast Laniakea Supercluster - eventually reaching the grand scales of the cosmic web and the observable universe. The talk also highlights that our cosmic address is not just a physical location in space. It is also a reflection of where our curiosity and imagination have taken us as a species. Only about a century ago, humanity believed that the Milky Way was the entire universe. Today, we create remarkably sophisticated maps of the observable universe and study the large-scale structure of the cosmic web. In that sense, our cosmic address also traces the journey of the human mind.