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BOSS Great Wall
The BOSS Great Wall is a supercluster complex that was identified, using the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), in early 2016. It was discovered by a research team from several institutions, consisting of: Heidi Lietzen, Elmo Tempel, Lauri Juhan Liivamägi, Antonio Montero-Dorta, Maret Einasto, Alina Streblyanska, Claudia Maraston, Jose Alberto Rubiño-Martín and Enn Saar. The BOSS Great Wall is one of the List of largest cosmic structures, largest superstructures in the observable universe, though there are even larger structures known. The large complex has a mean redshift of z ~ 0.47 (z times Hubble length ≈ 6.8 billion light years). It consists of two elongated superclusters, two large superclusters, and several smaller superclusters as well. The elongated superclusters form galaxy walls, with the larger of the two having a diameter of 186/h Mpc (supercluster A in the figure); the second wall's being 173/h Mpc (superclus ...
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Hubble Length
Hubble's law, also known as the Hubble–Lemaître law, is the observation in physical cosmology that galaxies are moving away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther a galaxy is from the Earth, the faster it moves away. A galaxy's recessional velocity is typically determined by measuring its redshift, a shift in the frequency of light emitted by the galaxy. The discovery of Hubble's law is attributed to work published by Edwin Hubble in 1929, but the notion of the universe expanding at a calculable rate was first derived from general relativity equations in 1922 by Alexander Friedmann. The Friedmann equations showed the universe might be expanding, and presented the expansion speed if that were the case. Before Hubble, astronomer Carl Wilhelm Wirtz had, in 1922 and 1924, deduced with his own data that galaxies that appeared smaller and dimmer had larger redshifts and thus that more distant galaxies recede faster from the observer. In 19 ...
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Large-scale Structure Of The Cosmos
The observable universe is a spherical region of the universe consisting of all matter that can be observed from Earth; the electromagnetic radiation from these objects has had time to reach the Solar System and Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe is a spherical region centered on the observer. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth. The word ''observable'' in this sense does not refer to the capability of modern technology to detect light or other information from an object, or whether there is anything to be detected. It refers to the physical limit created by the speed of light itself. No signal can travel faster than light, hence there is a maximum distance, called the particle horizon, beyond which nothing can be d ...
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Galaxy Filaments
In cosmology, galaxy filaments are the largest known structures in the universe, consisting of walls of galactic superclusters. These massive, thread-like formations can commonly reach 50 to 80 megaparsecs ()—with the largest found to date being the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall at around in length—and form the boundaries between voids. Due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, the individual clusters of gravitationally bound galaxies that make up galaxy filaments are moving away from each other at an accelerated rate; in the far future they will dissolve. Galaxy filaments form the cosmic web and define the overall structure of the observable universe. Discovery Discovery of structures larger than superclusters began in the late 1980s. In 1987, astronomer R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii's Institute of Astronomy identified what he called the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex. The CfA2 Great Wall was discovered in 1989, followed by the Sloa ...
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Big Ring
The Big Ring is a ring-shaped large-scale structure formed by galaxies and galaxy clusters near the constellation Boötes with a diameter of 1.3 billion light years, located 9.2 billion light years away. It was discovered in 2024 by Alexia Lopez, a PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire. In 2021, she discovered the Giant Arc, a similar structure located in the same region. It is a significant astronomical discovery, as it challenges the Cosmological Principle. Currently, there is no known cause for its formation within our current understanding of the universe. The Big Ring is the seventh large structure discovered that contradicts the understanding of smooth matter distribution across the largest scale of the universe. Characteristics The Big Ring is composed of numerous galaxies and galaxy clusters that form a continuous, almost perfect ring-like pattern in space. With its diameter of 1.3 billion light years and a circumference of 4 billion light years, ...
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Giant Arc
The Giant Arc is a large-scale structure discovered in June 2021 that spans 3.3 billion light years. This structure of galaxies exceeds the 1.2 billion light year size threshold of the currently accepted model of cosmology, potentially challenging the cosmological principle that at large enough scales the universe is considered to be the same in every place (homogeneous) and in every direction (isotropic). The Giant Arc consists of galaxies and galactic clusters, as well as gas and dust. It is located 9.2 billion light-years away at redshift ~0.8, and it stretches across roughly 1/15th of the radius of the observable universe. It was discovered using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey by the team of Alexia M. Lopez, a doctoral candidate in cosmology at the University of Central Lancashire. The Giant Arc was discovered using a new method for finding large-scale structure by looking for intervening Mg II absorption lines in background quasars. It consists of two parts, GA- ...
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Observable Universe
The observable universe is a Ball (mathematics), spherical region of the universe consisting of all matter that can be observation, observed from Earth; the electromagnetic radiation from these astronomical object, objects has had time to reach the Solar System and Earth since the beginning of the metric expansion of space, cosmological expansion. Assuming the universe is isotropy, isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is equidistant, the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe is a sphere, spherical region centered on the observer. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth. The word ''observable'' in this sense does not refer to the capability of modern technology to detect light or other information from an object, or whether there is anything to be detected. It refers to the physical limit created by the speed of light itself. No signal can travel faster ...
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Sloan Great Wall
The Sloan Great Wall (SGW) is a cosmic structure formed by a giant wall of galaxies (a galaxy filament). Its discovery was announced from Princeton University on October 20, 2003, by J. Richard Gott III, Mario Jurić, and their colleagues, based on data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Size The wall measures in length, located approximately one billion light-years away. In the sky, it is located within the region of the constellations Corvus, Hydra and Centaurus. It is approximately 1/60 of the diameter of the observable universe, making it the sixth largest known object after the large quasar groups Clowes-Campusano LQG, U1.11, Huge-LQG, the Giant GRB Ring and the galaxy filament Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall (Her-CrB GW), respectively. The Sloan Great Wall is between 1.8–2.7 times longer than the CfA2 Great Wall of galaxies (discovered by Margaret Geller and John Huchra of Harvard University in 1989). It also contains several galactic superclusters, th ...
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Minkowski Functional
In mathematics, in the field of functional analysis, a Minkowski functional (after Hermann Minkowski) or gauge function is a function that recovers a notion of distance on a linear space. If K is a subset of a real or complex vector space X, then the or of K is defined to be the function p_K : X \to , \infty valued in the extended real numbers, defined by p_K(x) := \inf \ \quad \text x \in X, where the infimum of the empty set is defined to be positive infinity \,\infty\, (which is a real number so that p_K(x) would then be real-valued). The set K is often assumed/picked to have properties, such as being an absorbing disk in X, that guarantee that p_K will be a real-valued seminorm on X. In fact, every seminorm p on X is equal to the Minkowski functional (that is, p = p_K) of any subset K of X satisfying \ \subseteq K \subseteq \ (where all three of these sets are necessarily absorbing in X and the first and last are also disks). Thus every seminorm (which is a d ...
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Dark Galaxy
A dark galaxy is a hypothesized galaxy with no (or very few) stars. They received their name because they have no visible stars but may be detectable if they contain significant amounts of gas. Astronomers have long theorized the existence of dark galaxies, but there are no confirmed examples to date. Dark galaxies are distinct from intergalactic gas clouds caused by galactic tidal interactions, since these gas clouds do not contain dark matter, so they do not technically qualify as galaxies. Distinguishing between intergalactic gas clouds and galaxies is difficult; most candidate dark galaxies turn out to be tidal gas clouds. The best candidate dark galaxies to date as of 2025 include HI1225+01, AGC229385, AC G185.0-11.5 (the most recent and promising candidate thus far), and numerous gas clouds detected in studies of quasars. On 25 August 2016, astronomers reported that Dragonfly 44, an ultra diffuse galaxy (UDG) with the mass of the Milky Way galaxy, but with nearly no discer ...
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Milky Way
The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galaxy, which are so far away that they cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a Galaxy#Isophotal diameter, D25 isophotal diameter estimated at , but only about 1,000 light-years thick at the spiral arms (more at the bulge). Recent simulations suggest that a dark matter area, also containing some visible stars, may extend up to a diameter of almost 2 million light-years (613 kpc). The Milky Way has several List of Milky Way's satellite galaxies, satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, forming part of the Virgo Supercluster which is itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster. It is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars and at least that number of pla ...
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Galaxy Walls
In cosmology, galaxy filaments are the largest known structures in the universe, consisting of walls of galactic superclusters. These massive, thread-like formations can commonly reach 50 to 80 megaparsecs ()—with the largest found to date being the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall at around in length—and form the boundaries between voids. Due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, the individual clusters of gravitationally bound galaxies that make up galaxy filaments are moving away from each other at an accelerated rate; in the far future they will dissolve. Galaxy filaments form the cosmic web and define the overall structure of the observable universe. Discovery Discovery of structures larger than superclusters began in the late 1980s. In 1987, astronomer R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii's Institute of Astronomy identified what he called the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex. The CfA2 Great Wall was discovered in 1989, followed by the Sloan Gr ...
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