THE 10 LARGEST OBJECTS IN THE UNIVERSE.
The universe is a place of unknown dimensions that contains all existing matter and energy.
In other words, it contains all the galaxies, stars and planets we know today.
Although it is estimated that the observable universe measures 93,000 million light-years,
we do not know 96% of it. What will be the largest objects that we could find in this vast unknown
universe? Stay to find out! *Introduction*
The Earth is 40,008 km in circumference at the equator and for us this is already a large amount;
however, even in the solar system, the Earth is overshadowed by planets like
Jupiter or our Sun, which could easily fit 1,300
Earths and 1 million Earths, respectively. Thanks to technological advances,
it has been possible to develop telescopes that allow us to observe and measure the universe.
One of the best known is the Hubble telescope. This telescope works like a camera that captures
images of what it sees in its mirrors and sends this information back to Earth
for interpretation. One of its latest findings was to detect the most distant star ever seen.
Astronomers also use ray readings such as gamma rays to detect large bodies at great distances.
These rays are usually emitted during a supernova. But how do you measure distance in space?
Because there are such large bodies out there, the units used to measure distance on Earth are
not as useful. For this reason, light-years are used to measure the distance of bodies in space.
A light year is the distance that light travels in one Earth year and is equivalent to approximately
9 trillion kilometers, an impressive amount considering that nine has 12 zeros to the right.
There are very large objects in the Universe, but some tend to be larger than others. Taking the Sun
as a reference, where one million Earths would fit, the Milky Way would fit 700 billion Suns.
If that doesn't seem big enough, here are the 10 largest objects in the universe.
1. CfA2 Great Wall (750 million light-years) Also called Coma Wall. It was discovered in
1989 by a team of U.S. astronomers led by Margaret G. Geller and John Huchra while
analyzing data collected by the second CfA Redshift Survey of the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in an attempt to map the structure of the universe.
This wall is 200 million light-years away and measures 750 million light-years.
It consists of the Supercluster of Hercules and the Coma Supercluster; the latter includes the
Coma Cluster and the Leo Cluster. It also contains approximately 3,000 galaxies. For
comparative purposes, it is useful to mention that the Milky Way would enter this wall 7,095 times.
It is called a wall because its length is greater than its thickness, in fact this type of
structures are called cosmic web superfilaments. Clusters and superclusters are grouped together
forming a network of nodes, filaments and voids. Although we are generally only able to see
baryonic matter, the distribution of dark matter must follow the same distribution of
visible baryonic matter. To date, it is unknown whether the wall extends beyond what is observed,
as gas and dust in the Milky Way interferes with imaging in an area known as the Zone of Avoidance
(ZOA), where the night sky is said to be obscured. 2. Caelum Supercluster (910 million light-years)
Superclusters group large clusters and groups of galaxies within them;
they are the largest known gravitationally bound structures. The Milky Way, for example,
is part of the Laniakea supercluster, which is about half the size of the Caelum supercluster.
This supercluster is also known as SCI 59. It is 1.4 billion light-years from
Earth and measures 910 million light-years. This supercluster, as its name implies, is located in
the constellation Caelum and contains 50,000 large galaxies and 500,000 dwarf galaxies.
3. Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex (1 billion light-years)
This complex measures 1,000 million light-years and is formed by five parts. The Laniakea
supercluster contains the Virgo supercluster, which contains 100 groups of galaxies, including
the Milky Way. The other four parts correspond to the Perseus-Pisces chain, the Perseus-Pegasus
chain, the Sculptor region and the Pisces-Cetus supercluster from which its name originates.
It was discovered in 1987 by Richard B. Truly of the University of Hawaii. In 1988,
J. Burns, J. Moody, J. Brodie and D. Batuski studied some galaxies in the region, finding
that in the northern part of the complex there are some gaps where few galaxies exist. Investigations
beyond these have not been made to further study the complex. This complex has not been studied in
more detail because it lies behind brighter objects, which makes such a task difficult.
4. BOSS Great Wall (1 billion light-years) The Great Wall of BOSS is a supercluster
complex measuring 1 billion light-years and located approximately 4.5 billion light-years
from Earth. It was identified by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Baryon Oscillation
Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) in mid-March 2016 from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain.
This wall consists of two elongated superclusters (which form walls of galaxies),
two large superclusters and several slightly smaller ones. The entire system contains at
least 830 visible galaxies, as well as many others that are not visible.
Although it is relatively not one of the largest bodies, it is considered the most massive
because of the complexity of its system. Its total mass is 10,000 times larger than the Milky Way.
5. Sloan's Great Wall (1.38 billion light-years) The Great Sloan Wall was discovered in October
2003 by J. Richard Gott III and Mario Jurić of Princeton University,
along with colleagues, from data obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).
This wall is 1.37 billion light-years long, so large that it occupied almost 1/30th of the radius
of the visible Universe until then. It is made up of several galactic superclusters, SC1 126 being
the largest, and is almost 3 times as large as the Great Wall, ranked number one on this list.
At this point it is useful to mention that many of these objects go against one of the
fundamental principles of cosmology, which says that on a large scale the universe is basically
homogeneous and according to this, the limit of grandeur has a value of 1.2 billion light-years.
Although we have so far mentioned three walls in this count,
not all the scientific community agrees that they should be considered as a single element
since all the elements that make up the complex are not dependently connected to each other, but
are joined together by clouds of gas and dust that fill the spaces between them. In fact, there is
debate as to whether they are actually a structure or a chance alignment of galactic clusters.
6. Clowes-Campusano LQG (2 billion light-years) Clowes-Campusano Large Quasar Group (LQG), is
located in the constellation Leo, 9.5 billion light-years from Earth.
It consists of 34 individual quasars, which are highly luminous and powered
by supermassive black holes. It is also known as U1.28 due to its average redshift of 1.28.
There are theories that this group of large quasars is connected to another nearby one,
which would make it the largest object in the universe; however,
there is no evidence to support them. 7. U1.11 (2.2 billion light-years)
U1.11 was discovered in 2011 during the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It is a large quasar
group (LQG) located 8.8 billion light-years away and measuring 2.2 billion light-years.
It is located within the constellations of Virgo and Leo. It is made up of 38 quasars,
making it one of the largest known LQGs. It has a redshift z=1.11, from which it takes its name.
This shift is interpreted thanks to the Doppler effect, with which Hubble discovered that distant
objects are shifted to higher frequencies such as the red at the end of the spectrum,
but this is a topic that merits another paper. 8. Huge LQG (4 billion light-years)
The huge large cluster of quasars was discovered in November 2012 by a group of researchers at
the University of Central Lancashire, led by Roger G. Clowes, thanks to data obtained from
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It is also known as U1.27 because of its redshift.
This large structure is located 9 billion light-years from Earth and measures 4 billion
light-years. 90 thousand times larger than the Milky Way! It is made up of 73 quasars,
which are invidiously the center of a galaxy in the early universe.
The Huge-LQG is very close to another quasar cluster, which is located in the number 6 place
in this list, the Clowes-Campus LQG. However, several studies have emerged to find out if it
is really a structure or a region that will exist for only a few million years due to its nature.
9. Giant GRB Ring (5.6 billion light-years) This ring of gamma-ray bursts (RGB) lies 9.1
billion light-years from Earth and measures 5.6 billion light-years. It was discovered in 2015
by a team of astronomers led by L.G. Balazs while analyzing data from different gamma-ray
and X-ray telescopes with the intention of finding locations of new galaxies.
A total of nine gamma-ray bursts were captured, which are believed to have
come from the same source because they all coincided in their distance from the Earth.
According to various theories, no structures longer than 1.2 billion light-years can exist,
assuming that all matter dispersed equally since the Big Bang,
but this giant RGB ring is five times larger than the established limit.
Its very existence contradicts the cosmological principles conceived since
Einstein, which is an indication that we still do not fully understand how the universe works.
10. Great Wall Hercules-Corona Borealis (10 billion light-years)
Finally we come to the largest structure ever known in the universe to date. The Great Wall
of Hercules-Corona Borealis, also known as her-CrB GW, is a structure located 10 billion light-years
away between the constellation Hercules and the Corona Borealis that measures more than
10 billion light-years. It was discovered in 2013 using data from the Swift Gamma Ray Burst mission
and the Space Telescope for Immobile Gamma Rays. This structure is made up of an enormous group of
galaxies that occupy one ninth of the observable universe, i.e., it is 8 times larger than the
limit established by the cosmological principle and 100,000 times larger than the Milky Way.
Considering that the universe is 13.8 billion light-years and that this structure is 10
billion light-years away, the remaining time span is too short for a structure
of such dimensions to form. For this reason, the existence of this object also contradicts
the theory of the evolution of the universe. We have reached the end of this great count that
will leave more than one of us thinking about how mysterious the universe continues to be, because
despite so many years of study we still don't understand it. Just like the theories of physics
that can be replaced or refuted, the places on this list may vary, so keep yourself updated.