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Session 29 -- The Dynamics of Large Scale Structure

Oral presentation, Tuesday, June 13, 1995, 2:00pm - 5:30pm

[29.01] Large Scale Coherent Structures in the Universe

In the 80's, cosmologists distinguished between two competitive scenarios of structure formation. The ``top-bottom'' scenario predicts formation of a connected network of huge anisotropic ``pancakes'' of sizes $\sim 50$ Mpc, which further fragment into clusters and galaxies. The ``bottom-top'' scenario, based on models with mass fluctuations on all scales, predicts successive clustering of matter into clupms of increasing size. It has been widely believed that hierarchical clustering and the pancaking models are competing and even mutually incompatible.

Meanwhile the observations manifest both features, hierarchical clustering and large scale organization in the galaxy and cluster distributions. I will discuss theoretical approaches which unify hierarchical clustering and pancaking, and describe the superpancakes and superfilaments in the ``bottom-top'' scenario.

Tuesday program listing