A superultramassive blob of gas, half the size of our Milky Way galaxy, has been discovered lurking at the edge of the universe. This means that the gas is both far away and very old, since the light from it has been traveling since early in the universe's history. Over at the Knight Science Journalism blog, there's a terrific roundup of all the stories breaking about the object, which people have inexplicably taken to calling "Himiko" rather than the more media-friendly "space blob."


Based on this picture, it sort of looks like something menacing from an 8-bit videogame. But the space blob could turn out to be one of the most enormous galaxies ever discovered, especially if it has continued to grow in the millennia since it was formed.

via Knight Science Journalism Tracker