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Astronomers Discover a Group of Quasars 4 Billion Light Years Across
New submitter mal0rd writes "NewScientist reports a 'collection of galaxies that is a whopping four billion light years long is the biggest cosmic structure ever seen. The group is roughly one-twentieth the diameter of the observable universe – big enough to challenge a principle dating back to Einstein, that, on large scales, the universe looks the same in every direction.' For reference, Andromeda is only 2.5 million light years away."
I've been wondering about that for some time. I can't tell if some astronomers really are clueless or if the disconnect is entirely at the level of the press trying to translate what an astronomer is saying. I've about come to the conclusion that many astronomers are very confused. They say "the early universe" as a matter of course, as if the distance the Hubble telescope can see is somehow relevant to the age of the universe. As you so succinctly point out, the universe can not possibly be a mere 13.5 billion years old. That's far far too little time to form what we see in our own backyard, let alone what we see in the little bubble Hubble can observe.
This quasar cluster, for example. Quasars are supposed to be super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies. That is, black holes of galactic mass. The articles haven't said very clearly just how far away the cluster is from us, but let's take the best case and say the Milky Way sits right on the edge of it. That makes the farthest reaches of it 4 billion light years away. Are they seriously claiming that a black hole on the far rim of the cluster from us could have absorbed an entire galaxy worth of mass in a mere 9.5 billion years? And that's just a bare minimum. Most probably the whole structure is much farther away from us than that, and therefore we're seeing it even farther in the past.
So this phrase we hear constantly is just nonsense. "The early universe." We haven't SEEN the early universe. Not even close. That 13.5 billion years is simply the lowest possible lower bound for the age of the universe. We understand precisely nothing about the cosmic background radiation that allegedly provides us with the most accurate current estimate. That estimate is based on a model that was force-fitted to previous guesses. It's crap.
Someday we'll have huge telescopes, far bigger than Hubble, orbiting in handy places like the Trojan points of Neptune and Saturn, and we'll be able to make some really USEFUL parallax measurements, and start clearing up some of the mess astronomers have accumulated by guessing too much with too little data.
"Standard candle" novas. Oh please...