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: 1, Offtopic) by bart9h on Saturday August 22 2015, @01:36AM
*that's* where your mom were hiding!
(Score: 4, Touché) by shortscreen on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:00AM
mod parent +1 first post, +1 obligatory, -1 grammar
(Score: 2) by fleg on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:24AM
>-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
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"):
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
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
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
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.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 22 2015, @02:40AM
...the biggest thing in the universe:
All the stars in the known and unknown universe form a 360 degree ring in all known directions which covers 100% of our sky.
Good to know you can play fast and furious with your definition of what is a 'thing'.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Saturday August 22 2015, @03:28AM
Gravity binds structures together into bigger structures.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(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~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:59PM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @03:38AM
The Spathi mention a Precursor text referring to what they translated as "10 artificial `waste disposal sites`". Similarly, the Slylandro Joyous Lifting remembers that the "Shaggy Ones" (the Precursors) either discovered or assembled a set of 10 worlds and organized them in some pattern. He describes the location of two such worlds. The Thraddash likewise have discovered ancient text fragments which describe "Precursor Dumps" and state that the "Dumps are in some kind of pattern." It is generally assumed that these are all references to the rainbow worlds.
Rainbow World [stack.nl]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Saturday August 22 2015, @03:41AM
So far, every time someone has told me that above a certain scale the universe is uniform, it has turned out to be false. This has held true since the 60's. I see no reason why that should stop. Nor why that should violate the cosmological principle. Presumably structure-at-every-detectable-scale holds throughout the universe.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @03:49AM
Structure at every scale? What are you saying, Professor Mandelbrot?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Zz9zZ on Saturday August 22 2015, @08:11AM
Your last sentence, structure at every scale, basically violates the cosmological principle. Our theory for how the universe evolved assumes that it is like (simplified) gas filling a room. You'll see some random distributions/fluctuations, but once you zoom out to even the millimeter scale you couldn't tell one chunk of gas from another. This new finding says that the air in front of your face actually has some human sized ring shaped distributions of oxygen where magically the nitrogen hasn't encroached.
The take-away, cosmological principle needs some updating, the universe is not an ideal gas.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1, Troll) by mendax on Saturday August 22 2015, @04:25AM
You mean there is something bigger in the universe than Donald Trump's ego? Would could it have been? It couldn't have been George W. Bush's intellect? That would fit on a head of a pin.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @04:41AM
There's no room on the head of pin because the angels are having a party.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 22 2015, @05:39PM
When the party stops and the angels start puking and weeping into the toilets...
... don't blink.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday August 23 2015, @01:18AM
This got modded down to troll? Geez.... people here have no sense of humor! Perhaps I should start growing a beard, let my hair grow out, and start walking on my knees to match this sentiment.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday August 22 2015, @09:04AM
"the observed GRB's indicate that the nine galaxies are positioned in a ring shaped like a shell. They also show that the galaxies are all of a very similar distance from Earth – according to Prof Balazs, there's only a 1 in 20,000 chance that the ring's arrangement is accidental"
Lets see, how many objects in the sky? (count galaxies, count stars) ... taking 1 in every 20000 should turn up quite a few curiosities. And they all happen to lie in a plane orthogonal to Earth? You can always pick galaxies in such a plane, but why would that be significant unless you still have the pre-Galileoc believe that the Universe is Earth-centric? An exploding object generally throws out stuff in three dimensions.
(Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Saturday August 22 2015, @11:20PM
Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]