Largest Cosmic Structures Too Big for Theories

[HysteryDiagnosis]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20597-largest-cosmic-structures-too-big-for-theories.html



>>Space is festooned with vast "hyperclusters" of galaxies, a new cosmic map suggests. It could mean that gravity or dark energy – or perhaps something completely unknown – is behaving very strangely indeed.

We know that the universe was smooth just after its birth. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the light emitted 370,000 years after the big bang, reveal only very slight variations in density from place to place. Gravity then took hold and amplified these variations into today's galaxies and galaxy clusters, which in turn are arranged into big strings and knots called superclusters, with relatively empty voids in between.

On even larger scales, though, cosmological models say that the expansion of the universe should trump the clumping effect of gravity. That means there should be very little structure on scales larger than a few hundred million light years across.

But the universe, it seems, did not get the memo. Shaun Thomas of University College London (UCL), and colleagues have found aggregations of galaxies stretching for more than 3 billion light years. The hyperclusters are not very sharply defined, with only a couple of per cent variation in density from place to place, but even that density contrast is twice what theory predicts.<<

To this article I would like to add this photo so that your imagination may wander.

[ixion]

1. "Just because we can read and write and do some math, that doesn't make us

the Masters of the Universe."

-- Kurt Vonnegut

[yodermon]

2. "But the universe, it seems, did not get the memo."

K&R for this phrase alone. :rofl:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. Wait. HOW do we KNOW that the universe was smooth

immediately after birth?

[Occulus]

5. A video of a talk given at TEDxCaltech covers that and more:

Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse

[ChairmanAgnostic]

6. many thanks! I appreciate.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. fascinating. I got through half, and have to save the rest

Makes me want to dig up my books by Feynman too.

[FogerRox]

8. We have a picture of the cosmic background microwave radiation

from that time. About 12-15 yrs ago we surveyed the whole sky measuring the far away cosmic background microwave radiation.

[azul]

4. Looks like neural networks.

It's alive!