The biggest known structure in the universe may be even greater than the big one we thought it was.
The review of the spread of powerful cosmic explosions suggests that the large wall of Hercules-Corona Borealis, a galaxies, previously calculated at 10 billion light years, can actually be 15 billion light years in size.
Not only is it stunning on a scale, it is a huge challenge to our understanding of the universe. The findings have been sent for publication and can be read on the Preprint Server ArXIV.
The large wall of Hercules-Corona Borealis (or the large wall, for a short) was discovered more than a decade ago, when astronomers noticed that the outbursts of gamma rays occur at a concentration that is higher than the expected distribution.
The outbursts of gamma rays are the most powerful explosions in the universe produced during extreme events such as the birth of a supernova on the nucleus of a black hole and a collision of two neutron stars.
Because black holes and neutron stars are formed by massive stars, the outbursts of gamma rays are related to the populations of massive stars, which are usually found in galaxies.
Because they are so bright, gamma-ray outbursts can be observed at great distances and their concentrations can be used as proxy to map galactic clusters. The study of 283 gamma ray outbursts is what led the astronomers and Horvaw, John Hakila and Zsolt Bagoly to report the opening of the big wall in 2014.
Now the three scientists have joined a larger team to conduct a more detailed study of the outbursts of gamma rays across the sky to try to gain a more accurate sense of scale on the big wall.
They have looked closely at 542 outbursts of gamma rays with known red shifts-that is, the extent to which their light is stretched to more red wavelengths by expanding the universe, thus providing a confident measure of distance.
Their results indicate that the large wall can extend from a red shift from 0.33 to a red shift From a 2.43-total distance of about 15 billion light years (the observed universe is about 93 billion light years).
This is a finding that makes the problem posed by the large wall even more pronounced.
This is because our Standard From the evolution of the universe is based on something called a cosmological principle. This states that on a large enough scale the universe is homogeneous or “smooth” in all directions.
Each section of the universe should look more or less like any other section of the universe, with no major inconsistencies or irregularities. This has been confirmed by multiple evidence.
A structure greater than about 1.2 billion light years will be considered a major discrepancy and we have found many of them.
A super structure called Quipu measures about 1.3 billion light years, while Sloan Great Stall covers about 1.37 billion light years. The discovery of a similar structure called the South Pole wall, also about 1.37 billion light years, was announced in 2020.
The Clowes-Campusano LQG Galaxies Group is 2 billion light-years, the giant arc is about 3.3 billion light years, and the huge large quantity group is 4 billion.
Then it was the big wall, which was already exceptional in 10 billion light years throughout. The new results raised Ante.
Previously, the whole existence of the Great Wall was discussed. The new results show that the evidence of the structure is not a statistical fluctuation or a sampling deviation. It seems to be very real. What the data beyond – what the structure of the universe and its evolution – has not yet been explored.
What we know is that there is a lot to the universe we don’t know and that we still cannot think.
The answers are waiting somewhere. Discoveries like this move us more and more to find them.
The findings of the team are presented for publication and are available to ARXIV.