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Halafi Mengedi
- Senior Member+
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- Joined: 30 May 2010, 23:04
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Halafi Mengedi
- Senior Member+
- Posts: 47678
- Joined: 30 May 2010, 23:04
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Halafi Mengedi
- Senior Member+
- Posts: 47678
- Joined: 30 May 2010, 23:04
Re: Asteroid travelling faster than a ballistic missile to flash past Earth today says Nasa
Astronomers Puzzled by Cosmic Megastructure So Large It Shouldn't Exist
One Ring
Lurking some nine billion light years away from Earth is what appears to be a so-called cosmic megastructure in the shape of an enormous ring. It's so large that its existence should be impossible, according to new research reported on by The Guardian, challenging a fundamental assumption of our understanding of the Universe.
Known as the "Big Ring," the structure spans an astonishing 1.3 billion light years in diameter — a significant portion of the observable Universe's estimated size of 94 billion light years. By contrast, the largest known galaxy is a "mere" 16 million light years across. If it were visible in the night sky to the naked eye, the Big Ring would be equal in diameter to fifteen full moons. Succinctly put: it's unfathomably huge.
The unpublished findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Thursday, add to a growing list of inexplicably large structures that remain confounding — if not controversial — to scientists.
The work was led by Alexia Lopez, an astronomer at the University of Central Lancashire in England, who previously discovered an even larger cosmic megastructure dubbed "the Giant Arc" in 2021.
"From current cosmological theories we didn't think structures on this scale were possible," Lopez told The Guardian. "We could expect maybe one exceedingly large structure in all our observable universe."
One Ring
Lurking some nine billion light years away from Earth is what appears to be a so-called cosmic megastructure in the shape of an enormous ring. It's so large that its existence should be impossible, according to new research reported on by The Guardian, challenging a fundamental assumption of our understanding of the Universe.
Known as the "Big Ring," the structure spans an astonishing 1.3 billion light years in diameter — a significant portion of the observable Universe's estimated size of 94 billion light years. By contrast, the largest known galaxy is a "mere" 16 million light years across. If it were visible in the night sky to the naked eye, the Big Ring would be equal in diameter to fifteen full moons. Succinctly put: it's unfathomably huge.
The unpublished findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Thursday, add to a growing list of inexplicably large structures that remain confounding — if not controversial — to scientists.
The work was led by Alexia Lopez, an astronomer at the University of Central Lancashire in England, who previously discovered an even larger cosmic megastructure dubbed "the Giant Arc" in 2021.
"From current cosmological theories we didn't think structures on this scale were possible," Lopez told The Guardian. "We could expect maybe one exceedingly large structure in all our observable universe."
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Dark Energy
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Re: Asteroid travelling faster than a ballistic missile to flash past Earth today says Nasa
Cosmic Megastructure 1.3 billion light years in diameter….. hmmmm…..