Featured Image Credit: Springel et al. (2005)
Researchers believe to have discovered the largest structure in the nearby universe which is over 100,000 times larger than the Milky Way.
Understanding how matter is distributed across the universe is one of the biggest challenges in cosmology and astrophysics.
Scientists have spent decades trying to map the web of galaxies, stars and cosmic structures that make up the universe in the hope of uncovering its origins.
And while the universe is rapidly expanding, gravity is working to pull everything together which proves to be an ongoing battle.
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Quipu is one of five gigantic structures recently discovered between 424 million and 815 million light-years away from Earth. Spanning 1.3 billion light-years, Quipu would fit 13,000 galaxies like the Milky Way whilst its solar mass is 2 × 10¹⁷ - equivalent to about 130,000 Milky Ways.
Named after the Incan counting system that used knotted cords on a strand for record-keeping, Quipu similarly has over-densities with larger clusters along its strands.
According to astrophysicist Alfredo Carpineti, Quipu has "one main strand of clusters of galaxies from which many strands depart."
Impressively, it collectively holds 45% of all galaxy clusters, 30% of all galaxies and a quarter of all matter within that region of the near Universe - yet they occupy only 13% of its volume.
While astronomers have found even bigger structures in the distant universe, those discoveries sometimes challenge our current models of cosmology.
Quipu is one of five large cosmic structures discovered and fits within expectations and simulations of the cosmos expect the presence of structures like Quipu out there.
But it might still have a major impact.
Its sheer size could affect how we measure the expansion of the universe, suggesting a possible solution to the famous Hubble tension.
The Hubble tension is the ongoing mystery of why different methods give different results for the universe’s expansion rate.
For now, scientists aren’t completely confident in linking Quipu to these cosmological mysteries, but its discovery is a reminder that there’s still a lot more to uncover about our universe.
Even though Quipu currently holds the title for the largest structure in the nearby universe, it’s not without competition.
The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall stretches an incredible ten billion light-years, making it the largest known cosmic structure - at least in theory.
However, astrophysicist Hans Böhringer from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics explained that scientists have yet to confirm whether it’s actually a single entity.
