Largest Object in the Universe Discovered

prostoalex writes "Quick, think of the largest object you can imagine. Whatever your imagination delivered it probably wasn't an 'enormous amoeba-like structure 200 light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas,' a newly found object, as USA Today reports."

Comments

That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[nincehelser]

But what's a few orders of magnitude among friends?

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[roseblood]

Up to 200Million from 200? That's BLOATWARE if I've ever seen it.

Microsoft OS used to work on a 8Mhz machine and now will require a 4Ghz machine(4000Mhz) to run well(MS Vista.) That's only a 500x increase. The 1,000,000 time increase here makes that look like a drop in the bucket!

The universe making MS look good! Gotta love it.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[B'Trey]

Playing sort of fast and loose with the definition of "object," aren't they? I generally think of an object as a single item, not a collective. If this is an "object," then why isn't the universe itself an object? And if the universe is an object, then it's necessarily larger than this one.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[MrNaz]

Agreed. On a cosmic level we have no way of knowing if the known universe is just a small part of a larger structure. As such, all of the known universe could be "single object", so lets be serious about the way we define things, especially in physics.

In my opinion, TFA is a load of crud. An "object" is a single item. To use an astrophysics definition, it is a parcel of matter of contiguous structure bound by atomic or molecular forces (but not magnetic or gravitic) incorporating solid or liquid state matter, but not gasses or plasmas.

Following this definition:

• Earth is an object, but its atmosphere is not part of it.
• The outer gasseous atmosphere of Jupiter is not part of the planet itself, which is made up of liquid and presumably solids as well.
• When the Sun casts off gas in solar flares, that gas ceases to be "part" of the Sun.
• A full baloon is an object that does NOT incorporate the gas it contains.
• Many have spoken of "escape velocities" being the tie that causes an object to become "one" with another. BS BS BS. The Earth and its moon are not one object, nor are the Sun and the Earth.
• Dust is a collection of very many tiny objects. Yes, its a little hard to think of a "dust cloud" as many small objects, but thats the way it is, so deal with it.

Stop with the hyperbole already. A collection of galaxies and gasses and the missing brains of Slashdot readers is not a single object. Calling it one is just an excuse to attract attention to a "hey my discovered object is bigger than yours" competition.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[jc42]

Well, maybe. But there are a number of examples where it turns out to be very useful to treat a collection of physically disconnected objects as an object. The most common example in astronomy is probably a galaxy, which in many respects acts like a single, organized "object", despite the fact that it's actually trillions of separate objects loosely bound by gravity. And we usually treat our Solar System as an object (which contains four smaller objects of similar structure).

My favorite example is biological. We have no trouble viewing colonial organisms like a sponge or a coral head or a Portuguese Man-o-War as a single "object", even as a single "individual". But biologists have found that treating a hive of bees or ants (or any eusocial creatures) as a single "individual" helps greatly in understanding them. True, these individuals have a lot of physically disconnected bodies. But they are bound by effective communication systems, mostly chemical, partly visual and auditory, and they really do behave as a single colonial individual.

This mostly just illustrates that our definitions of "individual" and "object" might need a bit of work. And the best definition might vary somewhat depending on your field of study.

We know pretty well that treating the "Gaia" concept as a real individual is mostly just silly. But that's at the high extreme; a single animal such as a human certainly is an "individual" although we arose from what was originally a colonial collection of single-cell organisms 600 million years or so back. Somewhere in this continuum we find borderline cases like ants, bees, termites, and mole rats, which are borderline cases that confound our definitions.

But the universe doesn't have to file things according to our definitions. Rather, it's up to us to find concepts that work, and give them names that work.

It's likely that, for astronomers, it will turn out useful to treat this collection of galaxies and assorted other stuff as a gravitationally bound "object". Or maybe, like the recent discussion of the term "planet", astronomers might decide that this was a bad idea and will revise the terminoloy appropriately.

I think they'd have been better off calling it a "structure". But IANAA.

Gee, Captain...

[Zontar The Mindless]

It looks like we've got the Immunity Syndrome.

No way

[Eightyford]

It's even bigger than Bono's ego!

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Balmer's ego doesn't even compare with the size of his internal void.

ballmer.c: error: invalid application of `sizeof' to a void type

Wow, it really doesn't compare! (I'm so sorry...)

Submission is wrong

[nefele]

First of all, the structure is 200 million light years across. The distance from the Sun to the center of our Galaxy is about 26,000 light years, so 200 light years would not be very impressive in comparison.

Also, the article is somewhat misleading itself, as the blob isn't really a homogenous structure. It's just a group of galaxies packed together more closely than other clusters. So it isn't really that much different from other parts of the Universe.

Remember

[Eightyford]

Remember that was the largest known object in the universe millions and millions of years ago. Who knows what it would look like today.

We're doomed

[lysergic.acid]

They're here already...

The filaments were recently seen using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea.

Atleast they seem more interested in using our high-powered telescopes than enslaving mankind.

Vista???

[Anonymous Coward]

"The structure we discovered and others like are probably the precursors of the largest structures we see today which contain multiple clusters of galaxies"
So they found Windows Vista code repository...
Largest object in the universe and full of hot gas :D

Large pockets of gas?..Amend the bible?

[plasmacutter]

And yea on the 7th day G-d rested, after taking his gas-x ; )

*ps.. i am SOOO going to hell!

Couldn't resist

[Toreo asesino]

"That's no moon......" /starwars

Size 42

[Doc Ruby]

The largest object that I can imagine quickly is the Universe . It's taking longer to imagine the Multiverse as a single object, but it's even more fun.

An enormous amoeba-like structure...

[ptelligence]

Stuck to the lens of the telescope.

The Wall?

[Zarhan]

How does this compare to The Great Wall, discovered as a structure in 1989?

I know its name!!!

[Abreu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yog-Sothoth

We are doomed!

Re:Large Packets of Gas?

[MindStalker]

Well as stated by others the milky way is 90,000 or .09 million light years across.

SO if its 2000 times as big as our galaxy and we are just NOW being able to see it. Its probably REALLY REALLY far away.. I would guess! :)

Another note our cluster of galaxies called the Virgo cluster which containes most of the visible galaxies such as Andromeda is 100 million light years across.

Here come the "your moms" jokes

[varmint jerky]

n/t

Re:The largest?

[MindStalker]

Well its all about prespective. From our distance it appears as one object. I'm sure if you asked a molecule if he was part of an object with the next molecule he would disagree. :)

Space is big

[Yvan256]

"Space is big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."--Douglas Adams

Re:This reminds me

[bsander]

Fear the coming of the Great White Handkerchief!

Largest Object?

[Shadyman]

What, isn't that supposed to be "Your momma"?

Press release

[Jugalator]

... and here's the actual press release for the discovery in case you want some more meat than given by the simplified USA Today article.

Just an amoeba?

[malvidin]

What's next? A giant space crystal coming to attack Orion?

Largest Object...

[foxxer]

I bet it was written in java.

Fixed...

[Hosiah]

"Largest Object in the Universe discovered."

Whoops, sorry. Forgot to zip up...

Problem with pseudo-scientists

[MisterSquid]

The problem with pseudoscientists such as yourself is that your thinking is limited by what you know.

So what if the fastest information can travel is the speed of light? If this 200-million-light year-wide amoeba is, say, a small part of the being, problems of entropy and decay may not be relevant. How long will the larger structures of such a being persist? What are the structures of such a being?

Imagine a species of "being" existing on the scale of what we call the quantum. Applying what is knowable about the world of the quantum to the world of the molecular would mean that our macro world could not exist. Such beings would say, "the ravages of quantum mechanics and particle decay and instability would not allow such beings to exist." They would be both right and wrong. The world we normally observe cannot be extrapolated from the world of the subatomic. Lucky for us, our world is an empirical fact.

Concerning the grandparent's ideas which you so cavalierly dismiss according to what you know about your sub-universe scale, those ideas are unproven and perhaps unlikely. What is not unlikely is the empirical fact that our universe is part of something whose dimensions and larger nature is UNKNOWABLE TO US

Re:Problem with pseudo-scientists

[MisterSquid]

Whose thinking ISN'T limited by what they know?

Everyone has limitations, but one of the beauties of the human mind is metacognition. The phenomenon of having expert knowledge prevent one from reinterpreting contrary data is referred to as "confirmation bias" which I recently read about in a blog post by Bob Sutton. Sutton is a fairly renowned consultant.

In the above post, he refers to a phrase that should be familiar to many geeks, which is "strong opinions, weakly held." This is a very good approach to the study of science. Know what you know with near certainty, but the second you come across contrary evidence be ready to let everything go.

Really, it's just the idea that no one, really, knows anything. All knowledge is contingent and what little we think we know is probably wrong somewhere.

Re:This reminds me

[wondafucka]

I wish I could mod you down for being a rude jackass. Or at least for trying to link 5th graders and stoners.

I've got some stoner logic for you "Woah man, what if there was, like, this kind of person who was really smart, and like totally understood math and science concepts, but like, is totally stupid when it comes to dealing with people. Like they're just plain condescending and rude."

On the other hand, your logic for the existance of macro or micro organisms holds weight.