January 9, 2001
Bigger Than a Breadbox, or Anything Else
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AN
DIEGO, Jan. 8 — Astronomers have found what may be the largest
structure in the observable universe, an immense concentration of
quasars and galaxies clustered across more than 600 million light years.
The structure, which would include billions upon billions of stars like
the Sun, is 6.5 billion light years away, which means the cluster
existed when the universe was just a third of its present age of about
10 billion years. The light that revealed the cluster actually started
its long journey before formation of the solar system that includes
Earth.
"We have found nothing bigger in the literature and
nobody has brought to our attention anything bigger," said Gerard
Williger, a National Optical Astronomy Observatories researcher now
working at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. He
presented his study today at a meeting of the American Astronomical
Society.
Viewed from Earth, the structure is just below the center of the constellation Leo the Lion.
Dr. Williger said it was not known whether the gathering of quasars and
galaxies was bound together gravitationally or whether it was a chance
cluster formed by a ripple in the smooth expansion of the universe that
followed the Big Bang.
"This may be an artifact of the Big
Bang," he said. Conditions at that point, he said, may have been
uniquely ripe for the quick formation of stars, galaxies and quasars.
