Ridiculously huge cluster of galaxies constituting the largest known structure in the universe recently found

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTKv5LUfITc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huge-LQG

The Huge-LQG is estimated to be approximately 1240 megaparsecs (4 billion light-years) in its longest dimension […]

This object is so large that it defies the cosmological principle, which basically states that their universe is uniform, the same throughout, and that a sample of the universe at a particular scale will be quite similar to any other given sample. (The cosmological principle also dictates that the universe's physical laws are isotropic therefore the same everywhere within the universe, but this aspect remains uncontested by the discovery.) Until we've found this massive structure, the distribution of matter across the universe has been quite even; this cluster is like a huge lump in the porridge.

It's rather interesting how sometimes astronomers and physicists are baffled by the homogeneity of the universe, like with the horizon problem where it's been noted the temperature of the universe is almost precisely the same throughout, and other times shocked when it proves not to be entirely homogeneous in other ways as is the case here. Inflationary theory, which postulated that the universe actually rapidly inflated in its incipience rather than violently exploded as to account for the even distribution of heat, seems to be taken for granted these days. At the end of the video, Ed Copeland brings up an interesting theory about fluctuations in the early universe being greatly magnified as they were stretched out along with everything else, so perhaps this oddly dense clump of matter could be accounted for by such an idiosyncrasy.

New discoveries that challenge current accepted "facts" of the universe are showing with increasing frequency, demonstrating how much in fact is still unknown. These discoveries are fascinating and my guess is that the current picture of how the universe is will soon undergo some serious revisions.

They just confirmed in the radio that this galaxy was in fact the results of one scientists sneeze, the saliva showed up as a galaxy.

Spoiler:

anarkandi wrote:They just confirmed in the radio that this galaxy was in fact the results of one scientists sneeze, the saliva showed up as a galaxy.

Seeing how they made a similar error with the OPERA experiment in Italy where they reported neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light because there was a faulty wire messing up the experiment or some such nonsense, I wouldn't be too shocked.

Dreamspace wrote:

anarkandi wrote:They just confirmed in the radio that this galaxy was in fact the results of one scientists sneeze, the saliva showed up as a galaxy.

Seeing how they made a similar error with the OPERA experiment in Italy where they reported neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light because there was a faulty wire messing up the experiment or some such nonsense, I wouldn't be too shocked.

Yeah, I actually drew my joke.. from that occurance.