Space | The discovery of the Great Ring of Galaxies challenges ideas about the structure of the universe

Grow up A group of galaxies in space called a ring is so large that it challenges our understanding of the universe, say astronomers at the University of Lancashire.

There shouldn't be such large structures in the universe at all.

According to one principle of astronomers and cosmology, all matter is spread evenly throughout the universe. That's what they say as a cosmological principle.

The principle requires that entities of matter much larger than galaxies should not form in space.

Discovery is already the seventh large structure found in the universe that contradicts the cosmological principle.

According to it, the universe looks the same everywhere when the scale is the largest possible.

“The discovery gives cosmologists something to think about and challenges the accepted way of thinking about how the universe has developed,” says Iso, who discovered the Great Circle with his team Alexia Lopez.

He is a PhD student in astronomy at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), England.

The structure discovered with the help of telescopes and computers spans no less than 3.3 billion light years. One light year is the distance that light travels in one year.

For comparison, light travels from the Sun to the Earth in just over eight minutes and from the Earth to the Moon in just over a second.

Astronomers have previously found similar large structures in space. Such is, for example Sloan's Galaxy Wall. Its length is about 1.5 billion light years.

Another large structure found is the South Pole Wall, about 1.4 billion light years in diameter.

The largest single entity that astronomers have identified is a supergroup of galaxies called Hercules–Northern Crown Galactic Wall.

It was found in November 2013 and is about 10 billion light years long and 900 million light years wide.

Although the now discovered Great Ring looks like a ring in the sky, Lopez thinks that it has another shape.

Maybe it really is like a corkscrew – and its parts are only visible to Earth as a ring.

López presented his discovery In 243rd Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).. It was held in early January in New Orleans.

Lopez already discovered another space superstructure that has been named Giant arc.

Both the Great Ring and the Giant's Causeway are relatively close to each other as seen from Earth. They are close Bear Guardian Constellationwhich is located in the northern sky in the direction of Otava.

The Big Ring and the Giant Arc are a little more than nine billion light-years away from Earth, says the university's announcement.

“I found these structures by accident. This is a big deal and I can't believe I'm the one talking about them.” he wonders on the BBC's website.

Astronomers according to it is difficult to imagine such a mechanism that could produce these structures. Thus, Lopez thinks that the biggest structures in the universe may be remnants of the early universe.

In ancient times, the high and low density materials would have solidified into a part of the matter outside the galaxies.

Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain Robert Massey says that what has been considered one of the central principles of astronomy may need to be re-evaluated.