Largest Object in the Known Universe Discovered to be 5 Billion Light-Years Across

Scientists have discovered what might be the largest feature in the known universe. They've discovered a ring of galaxies that's 5 billion light-years across.

In this case, the researchers detected gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which are the most luminous events in the universe. GRBs release as much energy in a few seconds as the sun does over its 10 billion year lifetime. Researchers believe that they're the result of massive stars collapsing into black holes, and their luminosity helps scientists map locations of distant galaxies.

In this case, the researchers detected GRBs in the newly discovered ring. The GRBs appeared to be at very similar distances from us at about 7 billion light-years in a circle that was about 36 degrees across in the size. That's more than 70 times the diameter of the full moon. This implies that the ring itself is more than 5 billion light-years across.

If the ring represents a real spatial structure, then it has to be seen nearly face-on because of the small variations of the GRB distances around the object's center. The ring could, however, be a projection of a sphere, where the GRBs all occurred within a 250 million year period, a short timescale compared with the age of the universe.

A spheroidal ring project would mirror the strings of clusters of galaxies seen to surround voids in the universe. The newly discovered ring, though, is at least ten times larger than known voids.

"If we are right, this structure contradicts the current models of the universe," said Lajos Balazs, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It was a huge surprise to find something this big-and we still don't quite understand how it came to exist at all."

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