Huge-LQG

[Minskaya]

Utilizing data supplied by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at Fermilab, an international team of researchers at the University of Central Lancashire in England has discovered the largest known celestial structure in the universe. Dubbed the Huge-LQG (Large Quasar Group), the structure consists of at least 73 quasars whose breadth spans 4 billion light years. For comparative purposes, our Milky Way galaxy has a width of 100,000 light years. The previous largest structure ever encountered is the Sloan Great Wall with a contiguous structure of 1.38 billion light years. H-LQG lies roughly 9 billion light years from Earth.

The H-LQG discovery poses a theoretical problem because it appears to directly contradict Einstein’s Cosmological Principle. In addition, astrophysical calculations have suggested that ~1.2 billion light-years should be the structural maximum. H-LQG more than trebles this mathematical construct. It could very well be that the Cosmological Principle remains valid, but that we are not able to sample enough of the universe with our current observational technology. Needless to say, the international astronomical and cosmological communities are simultaneously shocked and thrilled at this turn of events. The H-LQG research paper is available in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

[Minskaya]

Kernel-smoothed intensity map (isotropic Gaussian kernel plotted with four linear palette levels). The horizontal and vertical axes represent Right Ascension and Declination in degrees (celestial coordinates). Dark green blotches indicate heavy quasar population. Lighter green blotches indicate a lesser populated area. The connected quasar linkage scale is 100 Mpc. The H-LQG (z=1.27) is denoted as a contiguous chain of dark circles. The lower red crosses mark the quasars of CCLQG. Joint redshift range of H-LQG/CCLQG (z: 1.1742 → 1.4232). The map covers ~ 29.4° x 24° of sky (a huge panorana). Whole clusters of galaxies can be 2-3 Mpc across and LQGs can be ±200 Mpc. Astrophysical calculations based on the Cosmological Principle suggest that cosmic structure should not exceed 370 Mpc. However, the contiguous chain of H-LQG stretches for 1200 Mpc. To provide a measure of scale, this structure is 1600 times larger than the distance from our galaxy to Andromeda.

[USSWisconsin]

Still less than an order of magnitude off from the Einstien prediction which is nealy a century old - pretty good Albert - not much in our cosmology theory has survived that long...

A truely impressive phenomenon - WOW!

[Chogy]

Our advance in the understanding of the Cosmos is simply staggering. Just imagine... a hundred years ago, the entire universe consisted of the Milky Way. There was no knowledge of anything else out there. Hubble finally cracked it in 1919 or thereabouts. Subsequently, the entire universe "expanded" from 100,000 light years - the diameter of the Milky Way - to 14 billion light years, and billions of galaxies.

[tankie]

Our advance in the understanding of the Cosmos is simply staggering. Just imagine... a hundred years ago, the entire universe consisted of the Milky Way. There was no knowledge of anything else out there. Hubble finally cracked it in 1919 or thereabouts. Subsequently, the entire universe "expanded" from 100,000 light years - the diameter of the Milky Way - to 14 billion light years, and billions of galaxies.

And of course , we are the only intelligent life in all of this ,,,, allegedly,,, :whome:

[USSWisconsin]

And of course , we are the only intelligent life in all of this ,,,, allegedly,,, :whome:

are we intelligent life?

[tankie]

are we intelligent life?

Of course , we can write and play music ;)