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Astronomers Discover Largest Structure In the Universe
KentuckyFC writes "Until now, the largest known structure in the Universe was the Huge-LQG (Large Quasar Group), a cluster of 73 quasars stretching over a distance of 4 billion light years. Now astronomers say they've spotted something even bigger in data from gamma ray bursts, the final explosions of energy released by stars as they die and the universe's most energetic events. Astronomers have measured the distance to 283 of these bursts and mapped their position in the universe. This throws up a surprise. At a distance of ten billion light years, there are more gamma ray bursts than expected if they were evenly distributed throughout the universe. This implies the existence of a structure at this distance that is about ten billion light years across and so dwarfs the Huge-LQG. What's odd about the discovery is that the Cosmological principle--one of the fundamental tenets of cosmology--holds that the distribution of matter in the universe will appear uniform if viewed at a large enough scale. And yet, structures clearly emerge at every scale astronomers can see. The new discovery doesn't disprove the principle but it does provide some interesting food for thought for theorists."
Maybe we're at the bottom of the turtles after all?
Like carelessly made Cream of Wheat.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The real importance of such observations and discoveries lies not in their ability to test existing hypothesis but in furthering our ability to form new ones.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Why don't they spend the money instead to fix Dear Leader's Obamacare web site?
Your tax dollars at work.
It wasn't such a long time since they discovered the (now second) largest before, was it?
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
So you're trying to tell me that something the scientific community thought was well understood (a la global warming, evolution) turns out to be in question?
Who tagged this "godisgreat"? Is it a joke?
All this seems to suggest is that God cooks up lumpy pudding.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Random distribution means that lumps will form.
This is relatively obvious chaos theory.
Even more so when objects can grow closer due to huge centers of mass.
This might be how black holes start for all we know...
These bunch of gamma ray bursts, are they in any way related to each other than in form?
These bursts would have all happened 10 billion years ago. What's to say they weren't common all over at that time?
I first heard about the idea of Fractal cosmology in Mandelbrot's book from 1982, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. The idea is quite simple: there is structure at every scale in the Universe, at least up to some cutoff.
It is kind of funny that some people are surprised when structure is discovered at larger and larger scales as we are able to make observations at longer and longer distance scales. It is much more sensible to expect to see more structure as we see more of the Universe instead of the more common (and hubristic) expectation that we have already seen all the structure there is to see.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
That's what she said!!!
(that's what you get from watching The Office).
Can we call it the Giant-Huge-Large-Quasar-Group?
Are they really that arrogant? Perhaps they just don't know English too well.
I mean, iinm, they previously claimed they had discovered the largest and now they claim it again. There is only *one* largest - it makes no difference if you know about it or not. If you find something new that is larger than what you thought was the largest, then all you have proved is that you were previously wrong. To then claim that the new thing is the largest is arrogant.
How about adding some words to fix it, like 'known' or 'probably'?
I *suppose* there might be some way to *prove* (or otherwise justify) such confidence. For example, if they know the entire volume of the universe and the newly discovered one takes up more than half, then it would seem reasonable to assume that it is the largest.
Max.
Cue the yo mama jokes
Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!
All it means that 10 billion years ago there were more GRB's, for whatever reason. That does not imply a structure.
Sachin Tendulkar is the most valuable person in the cricket world now a days.
If this is 10 billion light years away and 10 billion light years across, wouldn't that make the universe at least 20 billion years old, or at least considerably larger than we think it is now? The universe was smaller in the past, but when it was about 3 billion years old would it have been large enough to hold something of this size?
It's amazing what we think we "know", by trying to interpret the electromagnetic radiation that falls on us.
Next week: more amazing complete revisions of what we "know".
What's odd about the discovery is that the Cosmological principle--one of the fundamental tenets of cosmology--holds that the distribution of matter in the universe will appear uniform if viewed at a large enough scale. And yet, structures clearly emerge at every scale astronomers can see.
Beings as we can only ever see a very small fraction of the universe, and don't even know how big it is in its entirety, it's certainly possible we simply can't view a large enough area for the distribution to "even out."
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
What I never inderstand about articles that talk about very distant objects: they always use "are" as if this large structure would be there now, when, if at all and we interpret the data correctly, it was there billions of years ago. Something that "stretches" over 4 billion ligth years may also (depending on in which direction it stretches) also stretch over a time span of at least 4 billion years.
It is weird to think that what we see is not our universe at all: it is a picture that is a collage of times of what the universe was.
But what does it mean about our understanding of the universe now? Obviously we have no idea if Quasars "exist" -- the ones we observed so far are at least 600 million years away and thus have existed 600 million years ago.
600 Million years is a very long time. But 10 billion years is much closer to the beginning of the universe than to now. Does this make the violation of that "principle" then even more or qutie less significant?
Structures at every scale? Sounds fractal to me..consistent with nature's other patterns.
...the structure of the universe itself. Which is smaller than the collection of universes in the multiverse. Which is smaller than... Hey! Look! A turtle!
If there's structure everywhere we look in the universe, maybe it's the multiverse that's uniform. (Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist of any type. I'm just thinking out loud here.)
Is it simply the fact that these objects are all relatively closer to each other that expected? Do they interact in any fashion, or were they all formed at the same time and/or from the same source?
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Reading the article are they saying they have possible secondary evidence of large universal structures beyond our observable (through conventional means due to red shift) universe? Kind of like the few anomalous galactic cluster movements that we have seen running counter to what we expect given what we can see in the universe?
Isn't this another possible indication that a good deal of the missing mass that we are looking for is simply too far away to see?
Cool. More data.
-Tim Hare
We never had that.
At best, we had precious few enlightened men during some ages. Everyone else always danced and still dances to the witchdoctor's drum.
Presently we are in an age where we have more enlightened men than ever before - but we also have a lot more witchdoctors and dancers.
But we did win a battle or two along the way.
E.g. You won't be burned at a stake for using a match or a lighter any more, or be accused of stealing someone's soul when taking a photo of them.
It adds up.
Couple of thousand years more and no one will believe in astrology anymore. Probably.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
the distribution of matter in the universe is uniform if you view it on the scale of the entire universe. Which, if held to be infinite, definitively proves the theory.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
My object. It's bigger.
I have issues with the whole report. If the Universe is 13.xG years old, and it's been expanding...
1. How is 31 bursters over 10G ly a "structure"?
2. How big was the Universe 10G years ago? If it was then 10G ly wide, then the expansion is
clearly slowing down, only growing another 3G ly in 10G yrs, after doing 10G ly in 3.xG yrs.
mark "or maybe the Universe burst through an extradimensional wall, which resulted in
a number of bursters as they ripped through the wall for the rest"
"Until now, the largest known structure in the Universe was the Huge-LQG (Large Quasar Group)"
The Big McLargeHuge-LQG.
We see power-law scaling everywhere and it looks a lot like the statement in the article. If the size of cars obeyed a power law distribution it would be hard to tell how far you were away from the ground by looking at the apparent size of the cars. The wider you make your gaze the larger cars you will find. We see power-law scaling in continuous phase transition when the system can't really "decide" what scale to prefer so it kind of exists in all scales. Perhaps this means the universe is undergoing some sort of continuous phase transition. Very cool.
Must I remind yet again? The largest structure in the universe is the universe, because it's a subset of itself. No more largest structure pronouncements, please. The matter is settled. Also sprach Zarathustra.
Cosmological principle--one of the fundamental tenets of cosmology--holds that the distribution of matter in the universe will appear uniform if viewed at a large enough scale.
That's hysterical! How can smart people or people over the age of 20 believe this? I'm laughing at you science nerds!
Are you saying that gravitational lensing is just an anomaly?
Gravitational lensing seems to be one of the major evidences in favor of dark matter/mass, but it'd be interesting to see you (or anyone for that matter) argue that it's just an anomaly given that it can be observed in multiple distinct locations.
(Now, I think we both agree that dark energy is still just a hypothesis, but I think you'd have to come up with something better than claiming that it's "just an anomaly" to explain the existing evidence.)
HAND.
When they see large structures billions of light years away, then they're also looking back billions of years in time and the universe was a lot smaller then, so they're not really looking at something that large, they're looking at something that was small and has been stretched out subsequently, so these reports of 'large structures' don't make sense.
Thanks slashcode :)
if the matter isn't uniform that means the "missing" antimatter from the big bang event is still there, in the void spots of the universe, maybe sourrounded by dark matter or condensed by dark energy