In a breathtaking revelation that reshapes our understanding of the cosmos, a team of scientists has uncovered the largest superstructure of galaxies ever reliably identified in the universe. This colossal formation, stretching an astonishing 1.4 billion light-years across, lurks in the vast darkness of space, composed primarily of elusive dark matter.
The discovery emerged from an ambitious effort to map the nearby universe using galaxy clusters detected by the ROSAT X-ray satellite’s all-sky survey. Spearheaded by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Max Planck Institute for Physics, in collaboration with experts from Spain and South Africa, this finding marks a monumental leap in our cosmic knowledge. The sheer scale of the structure defies imagination, challenging scientists to reconsider the very fabric of the universe and the hidden forces that shape it.
“If you look at the distribution of the galaxy clusters in the sky within a spherical shell, ranging from 416 to 826 million light-years, you immediately notice a massive structure that stretches from high northern latitudes to nearly the southern end of the sky,” Hans Böhringer, the project leader, explained in a statement.
There are 68 clusters of galaxies, with an estimated total mass of 2.4 1017 solar masses and a length of around 1.4 billion light years. This breaks the size record of all reliably measured cosmic structures. The largest of them so far, the “Sloan Great Wall,” for example, has a length of around 1.1 billion light years and is located much further away.
Understanding these galaxies’ structures is essential for accurately mapping the universe and performing cosmological measurements. The researchers have revealed how they influence the determination of the Hubble constant, which measures the universe’s expansion, and the analysis of the cosmic microwave background, a key indicator of its early evolution. Gayoung Chon from the Max Planck Institute for Physics stresses, ‘As our cosmological observations become more precise, even minor percentage corrections due to these structures become increasingly significant.
