{"id":38995,"date":"2013-01-12T17:15:33","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T22:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=34363"},"modified":"2013-01-12T17:15:33","modified_gmt":"2013-01-12T22:15:33","slug":"astronomers-discover-largest-structure-in-the-universe-yet-seen-find-challenge-einstein-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/astronomers-discover-largest-structure-in-the-universe-yet-seen-find-challenge-einstein-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Discover Largest Structure In the Universe Yet Seen — Find Challenges Einstein Principle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"quasars<\/a>At 1600 times the distance between the Milky Way and our nearest galactic neighbor (the Andromeda<\/em> Galaxy), the super cluster of quasars<\/em> (quasi-stellar radio sources) spans 4 billion light years along its widest dimension (i.e., it would take light 4 billion years to traverse its widest dimension).<\/p>\n

Such large quasar groups (LQGs) are the largest structures that can be seen dating from the early universe; in this case, light from the original quasars in this group commenced almost 9 billion years ago (or when the universe was just 5 billion years old).<\/p>\n

LQGs are typically comprised of anywhere from 5 to 40 member quasars, with the largest (previously found) being 70 to 350 megaparsecs (Mpc)* in size.<\/p>\n

But this newest, “most extreme” LQG — found amongst the millions of images in the DR7QSO Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) — measures some 500 Mpc in its shortest dimension and 1240 Mpcs in its widest dimension. It has 73<\/em> member quasars.<\/p>\n

The structure has been dubbed U1.27 (where ‘U’ stands for the connected unit of quasars, and the number refers to the mean<\/em> redshift; oldest quasars have a red shift value of \u22656).<\/p>\n

In fact,\u00a0U1.27 is so large that it would seem to violate Einstein’s cosmological principle<\/em> which asserts that, at large scales (such as measured in this LQG discovery), the universe should look the same no matter the direction or locale from which one looks.<\/p>\n

So, according to that principle, astronomers calculated that such large-scale structures should be no larger than 1.2 billion light years across. The newly discovered LQG is, on average<\/em>, 1.63 billion light years across (note: the measurement variability in its dimensions is due to its irregular shape).<\/p>\n

\"Large<\/a>
Sky distribution of the 73 quasars of the new, Huge-LQG (U1.27, z\u00af=1.27, circles), is shown, together with that of the 34 quasars of the CCLQG (z\u00af=1.28, crosses). The members of each LQG are connected at the linkage scale of 100 Mpc. The area shown is approximately 29 .\u22185 \u00d7 24 .\u22180. The DR7QSO quasars are limited to i \u2264 19.1. Superimposed on these distributions is a kernel-smoothed intensity map (isotropic Gaussian kernel, \u03c3 = 0 .\u22185), plotted with four linear palette levels (\u22640.8, 0.8\u20131.6, 1.6\u20132.4, \u22652.4 deg\u22122), for all of the quasars in the joint redshift range of Huge-LQG and CCLQG (z: 1.1742 \u2192 1.4232). (credit: Clowes et al)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2010, astronomers Yadav, Bagla & Khandai devised a “scale of homogeneity” with which to compare\/measure such structures in respects to the concordance cosmology<\/em> (i.e., their concordance, or agreement, with the cosmological principle). Previous discoveries of LQGs were only “marginally compatible” with this scale.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According Clowes et al<\/em> (quoting from the published paper abstract):<\/p>\n

“This new, Huge-LQG appears to be the largest structure currently known in the early Universe. Its size suggests incompatibility with the Yadav et\u00a0al.<\/em> scale of homogeneity for the concordance cosmology, and thus challenges the assumption of the cosmological principle.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

It may likely be the first time that Einstein has been proven wrong.<\/p>\n

* A parsec<\/em> is a unit of length used in astronomy, equal to about 30.9\u00a0trillion\u00a0kilometres (19.2 trillion miles). In astronomical terms, it is equal to 3.26 light-years, and in scientific terms it is equal to 3.09\u00d71013<\/sup> kilometres (1.92\u00d71013<\/sup> miles).<\/h5>\n

The findings were recently published in\u00a0 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/em> under the title ‘A structure in the early Universe at z<\/em> \u223c 1.3 that exceeds the homogeneity scale of the R-W concordance cosmology’<\/a><\/p>\n

The researchers responsible for the discovery are: Roger G. Clowes,Kathryn A. Harris, Srinivasan Raghunathan, Luis E. Campusano, Ilona K. S\u00f6chting, and Matthew J. Graham<\/p>\n

Some source material for this post came from the Science NOW article:Science<\/em>Shot: The Largest Structure in the Universe by Sid Perkins<\/a><\/p>\n

Top Image:<\/strong> (note: image is NOT of the UI.27 LQG) Quasars Acting as Gravitational Lenses. To find these cases of galaxy\u2013quasar combinations acting as lenses, astronomers selected 23.000 quasar spectra from the SDSS); credit: NASA, ESA\/Hubble and F. Courbin (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland; CC – By 3.0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 1600 times the distance between the Milky Way and our nearest galactic neighbor (the Andromeda Galaxy), the super cluster of quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources) spans 4 billion light years along its widest dimension (i.e., it would take light 4 billion years to traverse its widest dimension). Such large quasar groups (LQGs) are the largest 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the super cluster of quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources) spans 4 billion light years along its widest dimension (i.e., it would take light 4 billion years to traverse its widest dimension). Such large quasar groups (LQGs) are the largest…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}