How BIG is BIGGGGGGGGG? .............. v

[Ponce]

Largest structure in universe found, theory says it shouldn't exist..


Astronomers have discovered the largest known structure in the universe, a clump of active galactic cores that stretches 4 billion light-years from end to end.
The structure is a large quasar group (LQG), a collection of extremely luminous galactic nuclei powered by supermassive central black holes. This particular group is so large that it challenges modern cosmological theory, researchers said."While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe," lead author Roger Clowes, of the University of Central Lancashire in England, said in a statement. "This is hugely exciting, not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe."
Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe. For decades, astronomers have known that they tend to assemble in huge groups, some of which are more than 600 million light-years wide.
But the record-breaking quasar group, which Clowes and his team spotted in data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is on another scale altogether. The newfound LQC is composed of 73 quasars and spans about 1.6 billion light-years in most directions, though it is 4 billion light-years across at its widest point.
To put that mind-boggling size into perspective, the disk of the Milky Way galaxy — home of Earth's solar system — is about 100,000 light-years wide. And the Milky Way is separated from its nearest galactic neighbor, Andromeda, by about 2.5 million light-years.
The newly discovered LQC is so enormous, in fact, that theory predicts it shouldn't exist, researchers said. The quasar group appears to violate a widely accepted assumption known as the cosmological principle, which holds that the universe is essentially homogeneous when viewed at a sufficiently large scale.
Calculations suggest that structures larger than about 1.2 billion light-years should not exist, researchers said.
"Our team has been looking at similar cases which add further weight to this challenge, and we will be continuing to investigate these fascinating phenomena," Clowes said.
The new study was published Friday in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

http://refreshingnews99.blogspot.in/2013/01/largest-structure-in-universe-found.html

[Glass]

So I wonder what this means in people speak?


the universe is essentially homogeneous when viewed at a sufficiently large scale

So the universe looks consistent if you step back far enough? probably through loss of detail at a distance. It's almost as if they are suggesting the universe is not big enough to contain something this big. Sounds like a time and relative dimensions in space conundrum to me.

[Horn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyMnSyYE1b0&feature=player_embedded

http://www.reviewexplorer.com/news/6726_picture-of-the-entire-universe-anyone/
http://www.reviewexplorer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/theuniverse1.jpg

[Serpo]

Is it bigger than Texas.............

[StreetsOfGold]

that theory predicts it shouldn't exist,

Obviously the "theory" should be thrown out.

Anything BUT the Bible for answers. Fools, fools and more fools

Romans 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Ephesians 3:18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

[osoab]

Obviously the "theory" should be thrown out.

Anything BUT the Bible for answers. Fools, fools and more fools

Romans 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Ephesians 3:18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

Better to not speak and be thought a fool, than open your mouth and prove them right...

[General of Darkness]

I thought this was going to be about Michelle Obongo's ass. Who knew?

[Cebu_4_2]

.........V

[Horn]

I thought this was going to be about Michelle Obongo's ass. Who knew?4295

[Ponce]

Horn? that's what you call a "african american hole"........can't say black hole.

V

[Horn]

Horn? that's what you call a "african american hole"........can't say black hole.

V

They've yet to make a telescope that can reach to the otherside of it.

H

[Rubberchicken]

This BIG? V

[Horn]

So I snatched it all away from him, and I showed'em how to do it right

,4297

[EE_]

I find all this space/universe research facinating but, I still think there are many unanswered questions about the only planetary object we/man hinself can reach...the moon.

Why have we abandoned research on the moon after only a couple visits to pick up a few rocks? Why is there no station there to conduct experiments? Why have we not set up equipment to drill deep into the core to see what we find, maybe water?

Of cource, if we've never really been there because a man cannot survive the journey through the Van Allen belt...then that would explain everything.

We are still discovering new info about the moon today without going there. What would we find with todays technology, if we did go back?

Moon’s Inner Crust Almost Completely Pulverized
by Nancy Atkinson on December 6, 2012

This image shows a highly porous crust on the lunar surface, a consequence of fractures generated by billions of years of impact cratering. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ IPGP

From looking at the Moon’s surface, we know it has taken a beating from asteroids and comets pummeling its surface. But new details from the GRAIL mission reveal the lunar interior just below the surface has been walloped as well, and is almost completely pulverized. This surprising finding, along with the discovery of deep fractures, suggests that in its first billion years, the Moon may have endured a history of massive impacts, more than previously thought. By inference, this means Earth and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System endured huge early impacts, too.

“It was known that planets were battered by impacts, but nobody had envisioned that the [Moon’s] crust was so beaten up,” said Maria Zuber, Principal Investigator for the GRAIL mission. “This is a really big surprise, and is going to cause a lot of people to think about what this means for planetary evolution.”

The new GRAIL data agrees with recent studies that suggest that the Late Heavy Bombardment may have lasted much longer than originally estimated and well into the time when early life was forming on Earth. Additionally, this “late-late” period of impacts — 3.8 billion to 2.5 billion years ago — was not for the faint of heart. Various blasts may have rivaled those that produced some of the largest craters on the Moon, and could have been larger than the dinosaur-killing impact that created the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFoF9fSxYNI&feature=player_embedded

From GRAIL’s measurements, Zuber and her team have now stitched together a high-resolution map of the Moon’s gravity (read more about it in our previous article.)

But the resulting map also reveals an interior gravitational field consistent with an incredibly fractured lunar crust. Compared to the surface, the map of the interior looks extraordinarily smooth. Except for the large impact basins, the Moon’s upper crust largely lacks dense rock structures and is instead likely made of porous, pulverized material.

This moon map shows the gravity gradients calculated by NASA’s GRAIL mission. Red and blue correspond to stronger gravity gradients. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CSM

GRAIL’s lunar gravity map has also revealed numerous structures on the Moon’s surface that were unresolved by previous gravity maps of any planet, including volcanic landforms, impact basin rings, and many simple, bowl-shaped craters. From GRAIL’s measurements, scientists have determined that the Moon’s crust, ranging in thickness from 34 to 43 kilometers, is much thinner than planetary geologists had previously suspected. The crust beneath some major basins is nearly nonexistent, indicating that early impacts may have excavated the lunar mantle, providing a window into the interior.

“If you look at surface of the Moon and how heavily cratered it is,” said Zuber during a press briefing on Wednesday from the American Geophysical Union conference, “that tells us that all terrestrial planets looked that way, but Earth’s history is not preserved because of atmospheric and erosional processes on our planet. So, if we want to study those early periods, we need to go somewhere else, and the Moon is the perfect place for that.”

Zuber said that from finding an incredible fracturing of the Moon’s upper crust, we now know the crust of other planets likely have these same fractures as well. “We have reason to believe that the fractures on the terrestrial planets are deeper, and perhaps as in case of the Moon, even into the mantle. This effects planetary evolution, such as how planets lose heat,” she said.

Fractures also provide a pathway for fluids.

“Mars has been theorized to have an ancient ocean, and we wonder where it went,” said Zuber. “The ocean could well be underground, and we’ve seen evidence of water underground on Mars. If there were ever microbes on the surface of Mars, they could have gone very deep, so this finding opens up possibilities like that, and really opens a window to the early stages of our Solar System and just how violent a place it was.”

In addition to GRAIL’s discoveries, Zuber said another major accomplishment has been the performance of the spacecraft themselves. To achieve the mission’s science goals, the two probes, which can travel more than 200 kilometers apart, needed to be able to measure changes in the distance between them to within a few tenths of a micron per second. But GRAIL actually outperformed its measurement requirements by about a factor of five, resolving changes in spacecraft distance to several hundredths of a micron per second.

“On this mission, with two spacecraft, everything had to go perfectly twice,” Zuber says, adding proudly, “Imagine you’re a parent raising a twins, and your children sit down at the piano and play a duet perfectly. That’s how it feels.”

See an image gallery from the GRAIL mission here.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/98835/moons-inner-crust-almost-completely-pulverized/#ixzz2HslQQPwt

[Horn]

It makes sense that the Darkside of the Moon is much more like a shotgun blast, and the light side that of silver bullets.

[Neuro]

Horn? that's what you call a "african american hole"........can't say black hole.

V
Maybe an asshole?

[madfranks]

So I wonder what this means in people speak?



So the universe looks consistent if you step back far enough? probably through loss of detail at a distance. It's almost as if they are suggesting the universe is not big enough to contain something this big. Sounds like a time and relative dimensions in space conundrum to me.

Its the same at the atomic scale. A rock is far more empty space than it is solid mass, but at our scale it looks solid. If atoms were stars, the universe would look like a rock from a sufficient scale.