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Astronomers Spotted the Biggest Thing Ever Discovered in Space

A Cosmic Colossus: Astronomers Unveil the Largest Discovery in the Universe

By taylor lindaniPublished 9 months ago 6 min read
Unveiling the Universe's Gigantic Secret: Meet the Cosmic Superstructure, Quipu!

A giant is hiding in the sky. Kipu is the biggest thing we've ever found in the nearby universe. It's been messing with our understanding of the universe for years, and we've just discovered it.

Kipu is dense, powerful, and dangerous to ignore. If we don't understand structures like this, we might be reading the universe completely wrong.

So, what exactly is it?

It's not a solid object like a planet or a star. And it's not a single thing.

It's a super structure. Basically, an entire region of the universe. A tangled mess of matter spanning a huge amount of space stitched together by gravity. Ku is made up of an enormous web of galaxies. Galaxy clusters or giant groups of galaxies, gas, and dark matter. It's like a super highway with galaxy clusters being the cities, filaments being the roads, and dark matter being the invisible infrastructure holding it all together.

This giant stretches across 1.3 billion lightyear. That means if you traveled at the speed of light, it would still take you 1 billion3 million years just to cross it. Kipu also holds 200 quadrillion solar masses, even though it only takes up 13% of the observable universe. The name Kipu comes from the incant system of knotted cords used to record things called kipoos. It was like a writing system. In that system, each knot, color, and twist told a story, numbers, taxes, harvests, and so on. So when astronomers saw this colossal structure in space, long, tangled, and branching like space cords, they named it after this language of knots. Plus, the shape of the space reminded scientists of those threads. There's a long central filament, and the smaller ones are branching off the sides. What's even more fascinating, Kipoo isn't alone. When scientists mapped this part of the universe, they found five of these massive structures. They aren't just sitting there either. They formed over billions of years through gravity, slowly pulling matter together. All told, all those giants hold nearly half of all the galaxy clusters in that region, 30% of all the galaxies, and a quarter of all the matter in the observable universe. The team that found Kipu used a clever trick. They searched for X-rays coming from galaxy clusters.

These clusters aren't just full of galaxies. They're also filled with super hot gas. That gas is so hot it glows in X-ray light, which we can't see with our eyes, but special telescopes can. If there's a lot of that X-ray glow, it means there's a huge amount of matter, galaxies, gas, and dark matter all pulled together by gravity. That's where the densest, most crowded areas of the universe are. So, by following the X-ray globe, the scientists could draw a map showing where the biggest cosmic structures like Kipu were hiding. Why does any of this matter? Because these mega structures mess with everything.

First of all, they warp the cosmic microwave background. The ancient light left over from the Big Bang. It's a faint glow of light that fills the entire universe. After the Big Bang happened and our world was created, it emitted its very first light and signals that still haven't completely weakened yet. The leftover radiation is still coming to us even after 13.8 8 billion years. By studying this ancient light, scientists can learn what the early universe looked like and Kipu ruins it for us. H these mega structures hold so much gravity that they bend and distort this ancient light as it passes through them. That's called the integrated Sax Wolf effect. These warps add noise to the original signal. And now it's harder for us to get a proper clearer understanding of what the baby universe looked like and how it expanded. They also mess with the Hubble constant. The universe is constantly expanding and the Hubble constant tells us how fast it's growing. In other words, how quickly galaxies are moving apart from each other. But giant things in space like Kipu have so much gravity that they pull nearby galaxies toward them, messing up the way those galaxies move. This makes it harder for scientists to measure the universe's true speed of expansion. They can't tell if a galaxy is moving because of the universe growing or just because it's being pulled by something huge nearby. And finally, there's gravitational lensing. Light in space travels constantly, but it doesn't always follow a straight line. If the space gets distorted like by gravity, then the light traveling through the space will get bent and distorted too.

Gravitational lensing is when light from far away galaxies get bent because it passes by something super massive like Kipoo here. That huge gravity pulls on the light like how a heavy ball can bend a sheet. And since light delivers information to us, literally makes us see what things look like. This bending distorts how we see galaxies. The images of galaxies end up looking stretched, brighter, or we can even find an entire galaxy in the wrong place. It's like looking at our universe through a warped magnifying glass. If we're not careful, we could misread those distortions and get the wrong idea about what our world looks like. Luckily, we didn't just drop these mysterious superructures out of nowhere. Astronomers suspected that something like that should be out there.

They just didn't know for sure. Our best model for the universe is called lambda CDM. It says universe started with the big bang is still expanding and is mostly made of mysterious stuff. Dark energy and cold dark matter. The CDM part. We can't see or touch these things but we know they exist because if they didn't, our universe would literally break apart. This model matches what we do see like galaxies forming, how stars move, and the overall shape of the universe. So even if some puzzle pieces by themselves are still a mystery, they match the actual picture. And this model actually predicted things like Kipu.

When scientists ran simulations using that model, they saw similar structures forming, giant cosmic webs of galaxies tied together by gravity. Kipoo matched those predictions in real life. This also means that Lambda CDM is matching real life once again. Thank heavens. No huge surprises here. But now that we actually found it, it's the largest known structure in the observable universe. There was another giant before Koo, the Sloan Great Wall. That one was discovered in 2003 and was believed to be one of the largest structures ever found. And it's still an absolute monster. The Sloan Great Wall stretches over 1 billion lightyears across. It's called a wall, but it's not like a wall you'd find on Earth. It's also a vast cosmic web made up of thousands of galaxies and gas connected by dark matter. What makes both Kipu and the Sloan Great Wall so surprising is that they literally seem too big to exist.

According to the Lambda CDM model, structures that huge shouldn't be common, especially at the time they formed. How did these giants form so fast in a universe that's supposed to be growing, expanding, and smoothing over time? And if we keep finding more of them, that would be completely insane.

It could mean there's something deeper going on in the way our world is built.

It's all part of our crazy Capernian journey. A long series of discoveries where we just keep getting humbled by the universe. Every time we find something like this, we realize even more how we're not the center of everything. First, we learn the Earth wasn't the center of the solar system.

Then, we found that the solar system is just one speck in a galaxy. Now, even galaxy superclusters, which we believe to be the biggest, are being dwarfed by structures like Kipu and the Sloan Great Wall. But also, these structures won't last forever. Kipu is temporary. Over billions of years, gravity will tear it apart, breaking it into smaller pieces.

Some parts will collapse into tighter clusters. Others will drift apart. Right now, though, it's one of the most important structures in the known universe. It shapes how galaxies form.

It bends light, making it super important for us to decipher. It literally messes with our understanding of the cosmos. That's it for today. So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends. Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright

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About the Creator

taylor lindani

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