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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?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Zz9zZ on Saturday August 22 2015, @08:04AM
The point you're missing is that it is a structure where the pieces directly influence each other. The universe as a whole "supposedly" has areas which no longer directly effect one another. This discovery is important because it points out that our understanding of gravity is lacking. It is high time that we moved on from the 19th and 20th century, and we are getting very close.
"If we are right, this structure contradicts the current models of the universe," says Balazs. "It was a huge surprise to find something this big – and we still don’t quite understand how it came to exist at all."
To be pedantic, "All the stars in the known and unknown universe..." would BE the universe, and you started with: ... the biggest thing IN the universe.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Monday August 24 2015, @01:04PM
I'm no astronomer or cosmologist, so forgive me if my comment shows some ignorance.
The last paragraph, I feel, makes a logical error
"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."
Versus the line directly preceeding it:
"[A]t the largest scale, the Universe is uniform, so no matter where you are, it looks essentially the same"
They say it implies an uneven cosmos, but could it not also simply just imply an error at what is "the largest scale"?
What the GP states might be a little tongue in cheek, but could it be argued that what we consider as "The Universe" is actually only a single structure in a larger "Multiverse"? And that when viewed at "the largest scale" this ring of nine galaxies is not too big to fit in with the Cosmological Principle?
What I'm getting at is that the 9-galaxy structure is not too big for our scale, but our scale might be too small for the structure. Do they have more information to back up their implication?
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:10PM
Your point is totally valid in regard to the "largest scale", and if our estimate for the age / structure of the universe is off then we can not accurately determine theoretical limits. Either our initial conditions are wrong and the universe is much different than we thought, and/or our theoretical models for gravity are incomplete. Also, the cosmological principle is a very simplistic outlook on the universe and is really just a presumption. It reveals one issue with science, the authoritative (actually simple/straightforward) naming conventions tend to make people feel like they are Truth (with the big T) and forget that there is almost always more to understand.
~Tilting at windmills~