Astronomers Discover Largest Structure In the Universe

KentuckyFC writes "Until now, the largest known structure in the Universe was the Huge-LQG (Large Quasar Group), a cluster of 73 quasars stretching over a distance of 4 billion light years. Now astronomers say they've spotted something even bigger in data from gamma ray bursts, the final explosions of energy released by stars as they die and the universe's most energetic events. Astronomers have measured the distance to 283 of these bursts and mapped their position in the universe. This throws up a surprise. At a distance of ten billion light years, there are more gamma ray bursts than expected if they were evenly distributed throughout the universe. This implies the existence of a structure at this distance that is about ten billion light years across and so dwarfs the Huge-LQG. What's odd about the discovery is that the Cosmological principle--one of the fundamental tenets of cosmology--holds that the distribution of matter in the universe will appear uniform if viewed at a large enough scale. And yet, structures clearly emerge at every scale astronomers can see. The new discovery doesn't disprove the principle but it does provide some interesting food for thought for theorists."

Re: And I should care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because they're Hungarian

Re:What, again?

[mynamestolen]

1989
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CfA2_Great_Wall [wikipedia.org]
The Great Wall (also called Coma Wall), sometimes specifically referred to as the CfA2 Great Wall, is one of the largest known superstructures in the Universe, (the largest being the Huge-LQG). It is a filament of galaxies approximately 200 million light-years away and has dimensions which measure over 500 million light-years long, 300 million light-years wide and 16 million light-years thick, and includes the Hercules Supercluster, the Coma Supercluster and the Leo Cluster.[1]
It was discovered in 1989 by Margaret Geller and John Huchra based on redshift survey data from the CfA Redshift Survey.