Astronomers spot four billion light-year cosmic structure

[OrbitalDawn]

Astronomers say they have observed the largest structure yet seen in the cosmos, a cluster of galaxies from the early universe that spans an astonishing four billion light years.

The sprawling structure is known as a large quasar group (LQG), in which quasars -- the nuclei of ancient galaxies, powered by supermassive black holes -- clump together.

The discovery in the deep Universe was made by a team led by Roger Clowes at the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute at Britain's University of Central Lancashire.

It would take a spaceship travelling at the speed of light four thousand million years to get from one end of the cluster to the other.

To give a sense of scale, our galaxy (the Milky Way) is separated from its nearest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, by two and a half million light years.

"While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire Universe," Clowes said in a press statement issued by Britain's Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).

"This is hugely exciting, not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the Universe."

The paper appears in a RAS journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Link.

Fsck that's big!

 

[mercurial]

It would take a spaceship travelling at the speed of light four thousand million years to get from one end of the cluster to the other.

So 4 billion? Why did they phrase that so retardedly?

The paper appears in a RAS journal.

I don't believe this article. It's RAS!

 

[stricken]

so if the light we are seing is 4 000 000 000 years old... then its probably not there anymore. so i dont know what all the fuss is about.

 

[S.Harris]

so if the light we are seing is 4 000 000 000 years old... then its probably not there anymore. so i dont know what all the fuss is about.

But if it is as big as they claim, it stands to reason that something still has to be there. Something that big does not just go away in a couple billion years.

 

[ponder]

billions & billions

 

[Deezil]

It's not 4 billion years old ... only 4 billion light years in size (along its longest axis)

Original article also doesn't mention actual distance from earth.

 

[S.Harris]

It's not 4 billion years old ... only 4 billion light years in size (along its longest axis)

Original article also doesn't mention actual distance from earth.

Actually it is at least 4 billions years old, remember it had to expand to the size of 4 billion light years, and that does not include the time taken for the light from it to travel to us.

 

[Moosedrool]

4 Billion Light years in size is completely unimaginable to me. The milky way is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter and that alone is pretty huge.

Actually it is at least 4 billions years old, remember it had to expand to the size of 4 billion light years, and that does not include the time taken for the light from it to travel to us.

Agreed otherwise we are actually a part of this quasar and not independent from it. Plus its center might be quite some distance away and even then if we were completely parallel to it the furthest point would be another 2 billion light years further thus 2 billion years older.

Given the age of the universe 13.75 billion years I almost find it impossible for such an object to have formed. Does anyone know it's distance from us?

 

[Deezil]

Actually it is at least 4 billions years old, remember it had to expand to the size of 4 billion light years, and that does not include the time taken for the light from it to travel to us.

Ja-ja ... I didn't think it was neccesssary to state the obvious

 

[Keeper]

I don't understand

If this thing is 4 billion Light-years wide, doesn't that mean this thing is roughly 1/3 the size of the entire universe? (being 13.7 billion years old)


I just can't get my head around this...

 

[Deezil]

Universe isn't 13.7 billion light years big ... only 13.7 billion light years old

You're making an assumption that we are smack bang in the middle and we are seeing "the edge" 13 billion light years distant ... current estimate size of the universe is 40 billion plus light years (if I remember correctly ... need to find a reference)

 

[Keeper]

Ok you're right we are not in the middle, but if the universe is 13.7 billion years old, wherever the middle is (where the singularity occured), surely it must be 2 x 13.7 billion light years wide (from edge to edge)

I'm using 13.7 Billion here as a radius, of course.


I mean, how can it be more than 27 Billion light years wide if nothing can go faster than light?

 

[xrapidx]

How are we ever going to travel to these places...

Kids: "Are we there yet?" is going to be repeated through millions of generations, and then we're only halfway...

 

[Techne]

Actually it is at least 4 billions years old, remember it had to expand to the size of 4 billion light years, and that does not include the time taken for the light from it to travel to us.

Not necessarily. Space can expand faster than the speed of light.

Remember that the effect of a nonzero vacuum energy is to cause space to expand and for this expansion to accelerate. Objects moving away from us will therefore speed up. We can then ask the following question: How far away will objects get before they are traveling away from us faster than the speed of light? This may sound like a silly question. After all, Einstein told us that nothing can travel faster than light! However, when he developed General Relativity, the wording of this law had to be revised. Nothing can travel through space faster than the speed of light. However, space can do whatever it wants! It can expand or contract faster than the speed of light, and objects at rest in an expanding space will be carried away from us along with the space. Thus, the effect of a vacuum energy will be to cause all objects farther than a certain distance away from us to be receding from us faster than the speed of light. Put another way, such objects could not be seen.

Lawrence M. Krauss. Quintessence The Search For Missing Mass In The Universe (Kindle Locations 4383-4389). Kindle Edition.

So, it is theoretically possible that this cosmic structure could have expanded to that size in less than 4 billion years even though it has a size of more than 4 billion light years across. And that is why the universe can be bigger than 13.7 billion light years across.

 

[Deezil]

I don't think the universe has a centre per sé and the fact that the observable universe is bigger than 27 billion light years has got something to do with the first few milli seconds after the big bang in which space expanded so rapidly all scientific reasoning basically breaks down. Edit: I think techne's post explains it a bit better

Wikipedia gives the size of (current) observable universe as 46 billion light years in any direction

 

[ElecEng]

It would take a spaceship travelling at the speed of light four thousand million years to get from one end of the cluster to the other.

So 4 billion? Why did they phrase that so retardedly?

It was discovered in the UK, where a billion is one million million not the American billion of thousand million.

 

[Moosedrool]

I hate artist representations the guy drew a quasar to represent the clumped up cluster. WTF?
Here's the object consisting of 73 Quasars.



And some more scientific info:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130111092539.htm

The team publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Quasars are the nuclei of galaxies from the early days of the universe that undergo brief periods of extremely high brightness that make them visible across huge distances. These periods are 'brief' in astrophysics terms but actually last 10-100 million years.

Since 1982 it has been known that quasars tend to group together in clumps or 'structures' of surprisingly large sizes, forming large quasar groups or LQGs.

The team, led by Dr Roger Clowes from UCLan's Jeremiah Horrocks Institute, has identified the LQG which is so significant in size it also challenges the Cosmological Principle: the assumption that the universe, when viewed at a sufficiently large scale, looks the same no matter where you are observing it from.

The modern theory of cosmology is based on the work of Albert Einstein, and depends on the assumption of the Cosmological Principle. The Principle is assumed but has never been demonstrated observationally 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

To give some sense of scale, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is separated from its nearest neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, by about 0.75 Megaparsecs (Mpc) or 2.5 million light-years.

Whole clusters of galaxies can be 2-3 Mpc across but LQGs can be 200 Mpc or more across. Based on the Cosmological Principle and the modern theory of cosmology, calculations suggest that astrophysicists should not be able to find a structure larger than 370 Mpc.

Dr Clowes' newly discovered LQG however has a typical dimension of 500 Mpc. But because it is elongated, its longest dimension is 1200 Mpc (or 4 billion light years) -- some 1600 times larger than the distance from the Milky Way to Andromeda.

Dr Clowes said: "While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe. This is hugely exciting -- not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe.

'Even travelling at the speed of light, it would take 4 billion ... years to cross. This is significant not just because of its size but also because it challenges the Cosmological Principle, which has been widely accepted since Einstein. Our team has been looking at similar cases which add further weight to this challenge and we will be continuing to investigate these fascinating phenomena."

 

[copacetic]

billions & billions

*sniff*

 

[S.Harris]

*sniff*

At least we can read about dragons in garages.