The Great Ring, the gigantic structure of galaxies that astronomers say ‘shouldn’t exist’

Scientists from the University of Central Lancashire in England discovered a giant ring-shaped structure in space.

Astronomers call it the Big Ring and consists of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

It has a diameter of 1,300,000,000 light-years and appears to be fifteen times the size of the moon when viewed from Earth in the night sky.

They say it’s so big questions our understanding of the universe.

It cannot be seen with the naked eye. It is really very far away and identifying all the galaxies that make up the entire structure has taken a huge amount of time and computing power.

We advise

What do scientists answer when they ask us if there is life in the Milky Way?

The James Webb Telescope captures a stunning image of a newborn star launching giant fighter jets

A huge plasma arc and other fantastic images that won the 2023 Astronomy Photographer Award

Structures of that size should not exist, according to one of astronomy’s most important references, called the cosmic principle. This states that all matter is evenly distributed throughout the universe.

Although stars, planets and galaxies look like immense agglomerations of matter from our perspective, in the context of the size of the universe they are insignificant and, according to theory, larger groups of matter should not form.

The Great Ring is certainly not the first violation of this cosmological principle, and thus suggests that there is another factor at play that has yet to be discovered.

According to Dr. Robert Massey, deputy director of Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society, adds that the evidence is mounting reevaluate what has been one of the central points of astronomy.

“This is the seventh major structure discovered in the universe, which contradicts the idea that the cosmos exists even on a larger scale. “If these structures are real, then they are an object of reflection for cosmologists and for the accepted idea of ​​how the universe has evolved over time,” he said.

Accidental discoveries

The Great Ring was identified by Alexia Lopez, a PhD candidate at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN), who He also discovered the Great Archa structure spanning 3,300,000,000 light-years of space.

As for how one feels after making these discoveries, he replied: “It’s really surreal. I have to pinch myself because I made these discoveries by accident, were happy discoveries. But it’s a big deal and I can’t believe I’m talking about this, I don’t think it’s me,” he said.

“Neither of these two ultra-large structures is easily explained in our current understanding of the universe,” he added.

“And their ultra-large sizes, distinctive shapes and cosmological proximity must necessarily tell us something important, but what exactly?”

The Great Ring and the Great Arc appear to be relatively close to each other, in the vicinity of the Bootes or Boyero constellation.

a great mystery

Professor Don Pollacco from the Department of Physics at the University of Warkwick in England pointed this out the chance of this happening is smallso it is possible that the two objects are related and part of an even larger structure.

“The question is: how do these large structures come about?” he wondered.

“It’s incredibly difficult to think of a mechanism that could produce these structures, so instead the authors speculate that they see a remnant of the early universe where waves of high- and low-density material are ‘frozen’ in a extragalactic medium.”

There are other large structures discovered by other cosmologists, such as the Sloan Great Wall, a gigantic wall in the universe spanning 1,500,000,000 light-years, and the South Pole Wall, which extends 1,400,000,000 light-years.

But the largest single entity ever discovered by scientists is the supercluster of galaxies, the so-called Great Wall of Hercules-Corona Borealis, which is about 10 billion light-years long.

Although the Great Ring has the appearance of a nearly perfect circle in the sky, analyzes by Alexa López suggest that it has a shape more like a spiral. like a corkscrewwith his face aligned with the earth.

“The Great Ring and the Great Arch, both individually and together, present us with a great mystery as we seek to understand the universe and its development.”

The discoveries were presented at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in New Orleans.