A group of international astronomers has made a groundbreaking discovery, unveiling the existence of the universe’s first-known “bubble of galaxies,” a colossal cosmic structure spanning an astounding one billion light-years.
This monumental find is believed to be a relic from the era shortly following the Big Bang.
Researchers, who detailed their findings this week, describe this celestial bubble as an entity 10,000 times wider than our own Milky Way galaxy. The awe-inspiring scale of this cosmic anomaly has astounded scientists.
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Cullan Howlett, a member of the research team affiliated with The University of Queensland’s School of Mathematics and Physics, emphasized the bubble’s significance, stating, “This phenomenal bubble is a fossil from the time of the Big Bang 13 billion years ago when the universe was formed.”
He revealed that the team made the discovery somewhat unintentionally, as the structure’s sheer size extended beyond the scope of the sky sector they were originally analyzing.
What sets this bubble apart is its immense size, dwarfing even some of the most significant known cosmic structures, including the Sloan Great Wall and Bootes supercluster, both of which are integral parts of this newfound bubble.
Remarkably, this monumental bubble is relatively close to our galaxy, situated approximately 820 million light-years away, residing in what astronomers refer to as the “nearby universe.”
The discovery of bubble of galaxies holds profound implications for understanding the universe’s expansion rate. The newfound structure challenges previous assumptions, suggesting that the universe has expanded more extensively than originally predicted.
This revelation has the potential to revolutionize the field of cosmology.
Daniel Pomarede, an astrophysicist at France’s Atomic Energy Commission and another team member, likened the bubble to “a spherical shell with a heart.” Within this heart lies the Bootes supercluster of galaxies, encompassed by an expansive void often referred to as “the Great Nothing.”
This spherical shell encapsulates several other galaxy superclusters already recognized by science, including the immense Sloan Great Wall.
The discovery also aligns with a theory first articulated in 1970 by Canadian-American cosmologist Jim Peebles, who later received a Nobel Prize in Physics.
Peebles posited that in the early universe, a seething plasma gave rise to sound waves known as baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) due to the interplay of gravity and radiation.
These sound waves generated bubbles, and approximately 380,000 years after the Big Bang, this process ceased as the universe cooled, preserving the shapes of these cosmic bubbles.
Over time, these bubbles expanded as the universe itself expanded, a phenomenon observed in other fossilized remnants from the post-Big Bang epoch.
Previously, signals of BAOs were detected in 2005 when analyzing data from nearby galaxies. However, the newly discovered bubble represents the very first isolated baryon acoustic oscillation of its kind.
In a nod to the essence of discovery and awakening, the astronomers have aptly named their find “Ho’oleilana,” which translates to “sent murmurs of awakening” in Hawaiian. This name was selected by the study’s lead author, Brent Tully, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii.
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