Beyond Our Galactic Neighborhood For billions of times, the Milky Way and its companions have drifted together inside the Local Group, a small islet of light in an ocean of darkness. But beyond that islet lies a vast archipelago — hundreds of thousands of worlds, bound in clusters and fibers that stretch across space like a web spun by cosmic hands. The Local Group is just one bitsy cell in this immense cosmic structure known as the Laniakea Supercluster