The "Great Wall" Of Space: Galactic Superclusters a Billion Light Years Away Extend for 5% of Observable Universe

The vastest structure ever is a collection of superclusters a billion light years away extending for 5% the length of the entire observable universe.  Insert "yo mamma" joke here.  If it took a God one week to make the Earth, going by mass it would take him two quintillion years to build this thing - far longer than science says the universe has existed for, and it's kind of fun to have those two the other way round for a change.  Though He could always omnipotently cheat and say "Let there be a Sloan Great Wall."

The great wall is a massive array of astronomical objects named after the observations which revealed them, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.  An eight year project scanned over a quarter of the sky to generate full 3-D maps of almost a million galaxies.  Analysis of these images revealed a huge panel of galaxies 1.37 billion light years long, and even the pedantic-sounding .07 there is six hundred and sixty billion trillion kilometers.  This is science precisely measuring made-up sounding numbers.

This isn't the only wall out there - others exist, all with far greater lengths than width or depth, actual sheets of galaxies forming some of the most impressive anythings there are.  And these walls are only a special class of galactic filaments, long strings of matter stretched between mind-breaking expanses of emptiness.

The immensity of existence truly defies human understanding - which makes it very humanly awesome of us to try anyway.  If people could understand for a single second the true scale of everything out there, all our idiotic problems would evaporate instantly.  (Either because we got our acts together or our heads popped, no bets on which.)

Luke McKinney

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A Map Of The Universe http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310571

Comments

[SiliconJon]

Actually, "God created the heavens and the earth" within some timeframe within that initial week...well, at least that what it reads ;) You're going to bait trolls with remarks like that.

[Derick in TO]

"Yo Mama's so fat, she extends across 5% of the observable universe."

"Yeah, well Yo Mama's so ugly they named the Horsehead Nebula after HER"

[Thornius]

Does it spell out, "We Apologize for the Inconvenience" ?

[claudio]

Is it the Abel cluster of galaxies ??

Is it something else ??
Why the article does not provide the name of this supercluster ????

Or it is just the 'supercluster' of which the 'virgo cluster' is part of and in turn the local group is part of the Virgo cluster ??

Is it is only 1,5 billion Y distant then must be our 'supercluster'.
Apparently they have measured the depth and it is really deep if it extends for 1 billion year or the like distance.

However clustered supermassime groups are not infrequent...Luke give a look to the Abel cluster that i guess if further away from us...but it bends the light in a incredible way (Abel lensing).....give us more data on the monstaer so we can look too to the wonder.

Regards to the supercluster of galaxies.

[dirk alan]

why did god make the universe so big ? was she showing off ? was she O C D ?

[fred palme]

but the observable cosmos is only a higgs-particle of eternity!

[Rajnish]

"The immensity of existence truly defies human understanding - which makes it very humanly awesome of us to try anyway. If people could understand for a single second the true scale of everything out there, all our idiotic problems would evaporate instantly."

Dear Luke McKinney, great admiration from the depth of my heart for these two sentences. That momentarily uplifted me from the existential predicament of a small human creature on this tiny planet. Yes, indeed, if humans grasp even for a second the immense vastness of the universe, they would realize the pettiness of their pride, prejudices, wars and violence. Utter pity that we have totally insulated ourselves from the mysteries of life and the immense universe.

Rajnish
http://rewiringthebrain.net/

[Simon Says]

Mind boggling immensities. Should be humbling, although incomprehensible for human beings conscious of their insignificance. Nevertheless, the human brain/mind/consciousness, on the quantum scale, eventually may become vast enough to comprehend and interact with the universe... or remain enclosed in its current, encapsulated mode. Anything is possible, reason why life is so exciting, but sometimes limited, for lack of communication among humans.
God, conscious of having created humanity, even as a by product, should have no such limitation.

Simon Says

[yo mamma]

well you all are fucking bitches yo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[yo mamma]

ass hole!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daniel]

Kind of spins the mind. I mean, with all the stuff that the universe provides, from the smallest neutrinos up to that kind of vastness... Amazing!
So why is it that we are so self important and conscious? I mean, who really cares if the school/office/workplace doesn't like you for whatever reason, when there are hundreds of times more planets out there that could care less, and possibly provide even more life to not like you. :)

[Daniel miller]

The Universe is really, REALLY big! The fact that people are starving is now irrelevant. Thanks asshat McKinney!

[Don]

"Yes, indeed, if humans grasp even for a second the immense vastness of the universe, they would realize the pettiness of their pride, prejudices, wars and violence."

The vastness of the universe isn't about to stop us from being selfish. If anything, it would simply make us desire even greater things. What people lack is compassion, not intelligence.