# They just found the largest thing ever in the Universe, like, really, really big .... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 20, 2012, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596 "2012-12-20T02:35:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/21 "2012-12-20T16:38:36Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > I am being ninja’d to death. Who do I call? Postbusters. ---
**Author:** ![Myglaren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Myglaren](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myglaren)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/22 "2012-12-20T17:02:39Z")
Where’s **Angua** when we need her? ---
**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/23 "2012-12-20T17:22:37Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Re the OP title, the post should be “[your momma](http://pr0gramm.com/static/newest/your/127/2011/08/planets-size-your-mom)” 😛 fixt ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/24 "2012-12-20T17:29:57Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Do any our resident particle physicists and cosmologists and others have a particular take on this? I can’t get a sense of the implications. > > What was the background to this discovery? It can’t be a case of “Holy shit, Carl, you gotta see this, it’s humongous!” > > Also, I know that the knee-bone-is-connected-to-the-ankle-bone in myriad and mysterious ways in the Universe. What makes this new Guinness record-holder (probably not official yet) a structure? In the interest of getting back to something substantive… As I understand it, “structure” is anything held together by gravity. Galaxies and clusters of galaxies are all structures based on that definition. As for the background on the issue - I don’t know all that much besides what is in the article. However, the article does let us know that scientists already knew there were lots of galaxies and clouds of gas there. The “new” discovery is that they’ve connected the dots and shown that all of these are interconnected, and that there are many additional faint objects we’d never seen before. It’s fascinating to me that there’s so much out there that we haven’t seen because the faintest objects require so much telescope time to pick up. ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/25 "2012-12-20T18:27:46Z")
I’ll first note that the research reported here is about seven years old. (The linked article is from 2006 but the relevant publications are from 2004/5.) The evolution of the structure in and of the universe is modeled remarkably successfully by something called Lambda-CDM, which incorporates general relativity on the cosmological scale, folding in the potential for dark energy and dark matter. Lambda-CDM correctly explains a variety of observables: - the acceleration of the universe’s expansion - the abundances of light isotopes produced in the first tens of minutes after the Big Bang (in particular: hydrogen, deuterium, helium, lithium, and beryllium) - the patterns of fluctuations encoded on the cosmic microwave background radiation - the large-scale structures in the universe: galaxy clusters, superclusters, filaments (In reality, such observed data are used to continually constrain the settings on the free knobs in the LCDM model. But it could have happened that no settings of the model’s knobs could describe what it seen, and that hasn’t happened, despite impressively precise and varied types of measurements.) The last item in the list above is the relevant one here. The largest structures of galaxy clusters are formed from upward fluctuations in the matter density that were around from the start. How these fluctuations form and evolve is itself an interesting story, but suffice it to say that LCDM has a prediction for the distribution of such structures. (As a hint to the complexity: slightly denser regions will have slightly higher rates of particle interactions, resulting in slightly higher rates of neutrino production. These neutrinos will stream out of the denser regions and into less dense regions, in effect smoothing out the clumpiness. LCDM can even be used to put a constraint on the mass of the neutrino this way (by looking at galaxy structures!) and in fact this produces the tightest upper limit on neutrino mass so far.) In any case, the very largest structures should be quite rare. These researcher have found a large one and have reported some of its properties. This same region was discovered many years earlier, and what these guys have done is taken a wider view at it to discover that it is in fact much larger than what was previously seen. However, it doesn’t break anything, as such structures _should_ be present. It’s just kind of nice to have an even bigger one in hand now to study and to confront LCDM against. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/26 "2012-12-20T18:46:48Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Well, not to sound too boastful, but I _do_ have a large filament. Merely a filament of your imagination. ---
**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/27 "2012-12-20T19:17:38Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Honey Badger don’t care. Honey Badger is but a typing monkey amongst a sea of a million typing monkeys… ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/28 "2012-12-20T20:02:17Z")
> [@Pasta](#): > > I’…It’s just kind of nice to have an even bigger one in hand now to study and to confront LCDM against. Thanks so much. I’m on an iPhone, so I’ll take some time to think (_mirabile dictu!_) before getting to a machine where I can type a bit better. A personal question: Do you actually do (and/or get paid for) the studying and confronting specifically of this topic? Or are you speaking for the whole gang? It can’t be you only do considerate replies to laymen blegs. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/29 "2012-12-20T20:09:28Z")
Also, thanks to **dracoi** and all the other posters, ninjas and all. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/30 "2012-12-20T20:13:38Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > And then disappeared an insignificant amount of time later, desperately trying to convince itself that its self-awareness counted for anything in a universe that was 99.9999999% incapable of caring. Don’t make me get out my mayonnaise jar full of golfballs and beer-sand. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/31 "2012-12-20T20:22:28Z")
> [@urban1a](#): > > Well, yes, but, that is just how they looked 13, or so, billion years ago. They likely do not exist in the same form today and we have no way of knowing exactly what they evolved into. > > Bob As long as it hasn’t evolved into something covered with Mayan script that will hit any minute, I’m good. ---
**Author:** ![flyboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4da419/32.png) [@flyboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flyboy)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/32 "2012-12-20T20:41:06Z")
Great post, **Pasta**. I’m going to have to do that search, **Leo Bloom** , because I’ve never thought about what **wedgehead** brought up, and I think I threw a mental rod when I read it. ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/33 "2012-12-21T01:00:56Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Do you actually do (and/or get paid for) the studying and confronting specifically of this topic? Or are you speaking for the whole gang? I was speaking as a physicist in a general way, with a sort of “we’re all in this together” tone. My research has contact with some of the same cosmological and astroparticle physics questions, but I do not currently do cosmological modeling or observation. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/34 "2012-12-21T07:00:08Z")
> [@moriah](#): > > fixt Thanks! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/35 "2012-12-21T07:10:49Z")
> [@flyboy](#): > > Great post, **Pasta**. > > I’m going to have to do that search, **Leo Bloom** , because I’ve never thought about what **wedgehead** brought up, and I think I threw a mental rod when I read it. “Expanding ballon” is the search term I should have said. It comes up as a metaphor often for what I was trying to say, and what others say for real. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596/36 "2012-12-22T23:26:06Z")
If you think thats big, you should check out an axle-nut from a mid-80’s Harley. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-just-found-the-largest-thing-ever-in-the-universe-like-really-really-big/644596.md?page=1)