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posted by CoolHand on Saturday August 22 2015, @01:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the got-your-biggest-thing-in-the-universe-right-here dept.

I found this story Astronomers discover the biggest thing in the Universe in gizmag:

According to a team of Hungarian-US scientists led by Prof Lajos Balazs, the largest regular formation in the Universe is a ring of nine galaxies 7 billion light years away and 5 billion light years wide. Though not visible from Earth, the newly discovered feature covers a third of our sky.

The ring was revealed by nine Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) originating from the nine galaxies. GRBs are the brightest, most energetic events in the cosmos, putting out as much energy in seconds as the Sun will in its entire lifetime. They're caused by supernovae or hypernovae – supermassive stars collapse into neutron stars or black holes in times ranging from milliseconds to a few hours. Aside from their spectacular deaths, they also help astronomers to measure the distance of other galaxies.

... [The ring] casts doubts on the Cosmological Principle. First asserted by Sir Isaac Newton and developed based on observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the structure of the early universe in the past century, it states that at the largest scale, the Universe is uniform, so no matter where you are, it looks essentially the same.

According to the team, recent work indicates that the largest structures can't be more than 1.2 billion light years across. This is at odds with the new discovery, as the ring is about five times as big, implying a much more uneven cosmos.

Original report at Royal Astronomical Society; an abstract is available as well as the full report in HTML and as a pdf.

Any astronomers and/or cosmologists like to weigh in on this one? How earth-shaking a result is this? What would be impacted and how much?


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by bart9h on Saturday August 22 2015, @01:36AM

    by bart9h (767) on Saturday August 22 2015, @01:36AM (#226116)

    *that's* where your mom were hiding!

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by shortscreen on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:00AM

    by shortscreen (2252) on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:00AM (#226120) Journal

    mod parent +1 first post, +1 obligatory, -1 grammar

    • (Score: 2) by fleg on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:24AM

      by fleg (128) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:24AM (#226127)

      >-1 grammer

      or it was written in northern english vernacular. yorkshire, lancashire etc
      they speak funny oop north.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:48AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:48AM (#226135)

      You missed the memo. First person pronouns are obsolete. There is no "I" or "you" or "he" or "she". Only "us" and "them" (and maybe "it"):

      A series of groundbreaking studies have revealed that what we have always thought of as individuals are actually "biomolecular networks" that consist of visible hosts plus millions of invisible microbes that have a significant effect on how the host develops, the diseases it catches, how it behaves and possibly even its social interactions.

      https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/08/21/0352236 [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 1, Redundant) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:30AM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:30AM (#226129) Journal

    Were… seriously?

    I expect more out of my trolls! I expect more out of all of you!

    We were going to better ourselves, beginning with grammar!

    A plural when a singular is needed? Have you heard the phrase, “You are as you grammaticise?”

    When I look at you, guess what I see? A plural where a singular should have been!

    *frags bart9h with a rocket launcher*

    Now s/he is plural.

    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:36AM

      by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:36AM (#226131) Journal

      Strawberries are packed with fiber…. How long until we can get market fresh strawberries?

    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 22 2015, @05:28AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 22 2015, @05:28AM (#226154) Journal

      I expect more out of all of you!

      As do we all, as in all of us do expect more. We, as in "we is on your side!" Or "we" in the imperial sense, like, we'all will all try to meat your expectorations. I fear this will not end well.