The Great Ring, with a diameter of 1.3 billion light years, is one of the largest structures in space. Its existence challenges theories about the universe.
The Great Ring, as it is called, is a grouping of galaxies about 1.3 billion light-years across. It is one of the largest structures ever observed in space. It is located over 9 billion light years from our planet and is so faint that it cannot be seen with the naked eye. However, if it were directly visible, its diameter in the night sky would be equal to 15 full moons.
The size of the Great Ring appears to contradict a fundamental principle of cosmology, known as the cosmological principle. According to this principle, above a certain spatial scale, the Universe is homogeneous and appears identical in all directions.
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Alexia Lopez, who discovered the ring, was quoted by The Guardian and expressed her surprise at the discovery. “Based on current cosmological theories, we didn’t think structures of this scale were possible. We would expect to see perhaps an exceptionally large structure in the entire observable universe,” she said.
The Great Ring joins a growing list of unexpectedly large space objects. Another example is the Great Arch, which appears right next to the Great Ring and was also discovered by Lopez in 2021.
Cosmologists estimate the theoretical limit of the size of cosmic structures at 1.2 billion light-years. However, both the Great Ring and the Great Arc, which spans about 3.3 billion light-years, exceed this limit.
Both of these structures are located at the same distance from Earth, near the constellation Boös, which increases the likelihood that they are part of a connected system.
– These oddities continue to be swept under the carpet, but the more we discover, the more we will have to face the fact that we may need to rethink our standard model. It’s incomplete, to say the least. Maybe we need a new cosmology? – Lopez wonders.
The Great Ring was discovered by analyzing data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a catalog of distant quasars. These are objects so bright that they can be seen billions of light years away. They act like giant, distant lamps, illuminating the galaxies between them that their light passes through along the way. Without them, these galaxies would remain invisible.
Lopez and his team used several statistical algorithms to identify potential large-scale structures. This is how they discovered the Great Ring. The structure looks like an almost perfect ring in the sky, but further analysis revealed that it has more of a spiral shape, similar to a corkscrew, pointing towards Earth.
Cosmologists are not sure what mechanism may have caused the formation of this structure. One possibility is that a type of acoustic wave found in the early universe, known as baryonic acoustic oscillations, may have given rise to the spherical shells in today’s galactic system. Another explanation is the existence of cosmic strings, hypothetical “flaws” in the structure of the universe that could cause material to “clump” along large-scale faults.
Dr. Jenny Wagner, a cosmologist at the Bahamas Advanced Study Institute & Conferences, called the discovery significant. According to her, it is possible to include the Great Ring in the cosmological principle, depending on how its boundaries are defined. However, the more such large-scale mismatched structures are discovered, the less statistically likely this view becomes. “This is why the search for other giant objects is so valuable. Personally, I would not be surprised if, after future discoveries, we have to abandon the cosmological principle,” she said.
2024-01-13 17:44:08
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