Astronomers find largest structure in the universe

Posted by Emma Woollacott


Quasars are the nuclei of extremely ancient galaxies that can flare up brightly, making them visible across huge distances, for comparatively brief period of between 10 and 100 million years. They tend to group together in structures known as large quasar groups or LQGs. And the biggest of these, says the team, is enormous.

"While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe," says Dr Roger Clowes of the University of Central Lancashire.


Indeed, the structure is so big that it clalleges current theories of cosmology. The Cosmological Principle assumes that the universe, when viewed at a sufficiently large scale, looks the same no matter where it's observed from.

Based on this, and the modern theory of cosmology, calculations suggest that astrophysicists shouldn't be able to find a structure larger than 1.2 billion light years.

However, the newly-discovered LQG however has a typical dimension of 1.7 billion light years; and, because it's elongated, its longest dimension is four billion light years.

