A group of international astronomers have found the biggest structure in the universe that has challenged the modern cosmological theory by Albert Einstein, according to a report in Science Daily.
The cosmological principle, which has been believed for years suggests that structures larger than about 1.2 billion light years should not exist in the universe. The breakthrough of this principal changed the view of this theory when a team of astronomers lead by Dr. Roger Clowes from University of Central Lancashire, Jeremiah Horrocks Institute, discovered the largest quasar group (LQG) in the universe which is 4 billion light-years at its widest point.
Quasars are extremely luminous and active galactic nucleus surrounding the super-massive black hole and due since they are the brightest known objects in the universe, can be viewed easily from a huge distance.
"While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe," Dr. Clowes said, reports Science Daily. "This is hugely exciting -- not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe."
Over 200,000 quasars are found using the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the newly found LQG is the largest of all made up of 73 quasars and spreads about 1.6 billion light-years from many directions and 4 billion light-years at its widest point, according to Clowes and his team, reports Fox News.
Converting this huge size in understandable measurements, the newly found LQG is 1600 times larger than the distance between our Milky Way to Andromeda, which separates the Milky Way from its closest galaxy by 2.5 million light-years. The size of our Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years wide.
"Even travelling at the speed of light, it would take 4 billion light years to cross," Dr. Clowes said. "This is significant not just because of its size but also because it challenges the Cosmological Principle, which has been widely accepted since Einstein. Our team has been looking at similar cases which add further weight to this challenge and we will be continuing to investigate these fascinating phenomena."
The results are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
