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Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall

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Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall
A giant Hubble mosaic of the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745 using a combination of 18 images. The significant amount of dark matter in this cluster, shown in light blue, may be also similar to the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall.
Observation data (Epoch J2000)
Constellation(s)Hercules and Corona Borealis[1]
Right ascension17h 50m
Declination+27° 45′
Major axis3 Gpc (10 Gly)[1][2]
Minor axis2.2 Gpc (7 Gly) h−1
67.80
Redshift1.6 to 2.1[1][2]
Distance9.612 to 10.538 billion light-years (light travel distance)[3]
15.049 to 17.675 billion light-years
(present comoving distance)[3]
Binding mass1.5×1019 M☉[citation needed] M☉
See also: Galaxy group, Galaxy cluster, List of galaxy groups and clusters

The Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall (also called Hercules–Corona Borealis Supercluster Complex) is an immense superstructure of galaxies that measures more than 10 billion light-years across.[1][2] It is the largest and the most massive structure known in the observable universe.

This huge structure was discovered in November 2013 by a mapping of gamma-ray bursts that occurs in the distant universe.[1][2][4] The astronomers used data from the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

The Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall was also the first structure other than large quasar groups that held the title as largest known structure in the universe, since 1991.

Characteristics

The structure is a galaxy filament,[2] or a huge group of galaxies assembled by gravity. It is about 10 billion light-years (3 Gpc) at its longest dimension, which is approximately 1/9 (10.7%) of the diameter of the observable universe, by 7.2 billion light-years (2.2 Gpc; 150,000 km/s in redshift space) on the other,[2] and is the largest known structure in the universe. It is at redshift 1.6–2.1, corresponding to a distance of approximately 10 billion light-years away,[1][2] and is located in the sky in the direction of the constellations Hercules and Corona Borealis.[4]

Discovery

Swift Satellite
Fermi Gamma-Ray Satellite
The Swift Satellite (top), together with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (bottom), collected data that helped to trace the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall.
Artist's impression of a powerful gamma-ray burst. Through extrapolarating and correlating these events, the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall is traced.

Gamma-ray bursts are some of the most powerful events in the known universe. They are very luminous flashes of gamma rays heralding the death of distant, massive stars in cataclysmic explosions. Gamma-ray bursts are rare; only one happens in an average galaxy like the Milky Way every few million years. Since it is currently theorized that the stars causing these events are the massive, luminous ones, such stars form in regions with more matter in general. Therefore, gamma-ray bursts can be indicators of galaxies to track down traces of matter decoupling in such a region of the universe.

Using the observed data from 1997 to 2012[1][2][5] by Istvan Horvath, Jon Hakkila, and Zsolt Bagoly, the sky was subdivided into 9 parts with 31 GRBs each. In the data for one of the subdivisions, using the two-dimensional Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, 14 out of the 31 GRBs are concentrated in a radial area that is 45° wide, with redshifts from 1.6 to 2.1; if many GRBs occur in a region, it must be a decoupling of thousands—or possibly millions—of galaxies.

Homogeneity problem

According to the cosmological principle, at sufficiently large scales the universe is approximately homogeneous, which means that any two sufficiently large regions of the universe would look very similar, even if those two regions are very far apart. This implies that at large scales, forces acting on the universe are in mechanical equilibrium, with no unusual forces producing noticeable irregularities in the density of the random homogeneous distribution of physical quantities of its components. The principle is based on the assumption that the universe's physical laws and forces (such as gravity) act the same way regardless of location, and the universe is governed by the same laws of physics and is knowledgeable. It implies that the universe's components, such as matter and energy, are evenly and isotropically distributed throughout the universe.

Prior to the discovery of the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, the largest scale at which the universe showed evidence of hierarchical structure was on the scale of superclusters and filaments. At larger scales, around 250–300 million light-years, the universe looked homogeneous; this was called the "End of Greatness". The homogeneity exhibited at this scale and the apparent normal density of the universe (as determined by the cosmic microwave background) implied an upper homogeneity scale about 4 times as large (1 to 1.2 billion light years; 307 to 370 Mpc). Yadav et al suggested that the tips of the scales might be as well to 260/h Mpc based on the fractal dimension of the universe,[6] consistently smaller than the homogeneity scale above. Some scientists say that the maximum sizes of structures was somewhere around 70-130/h Mpc based on the measure of the homogeneity scale.[7][8][9] No structures are expected to be larger than the scale since, in accordance to the homogeneous and isotropic distribution of matter in the universe, do not expect objects to be larger than the said maximum scale. However, in spite of this, some structures are discovered that exceed the scale consistently, such as:

The Clowes–Campusano LQG, discovered in 1991, is 630 Mpc across, and is marginally larger than the scale.

The Sloan Great Wall, discovered in 2003, has a length of 423 Mpc,[10] and is marginally larger than the scale too.

U1.11, another large quasar group discovered in 2011, is 780 Mpc across, and is two times larger than the scale.

The Huge-LQG (Huge Large Quasar Group), discovered in 2012, has a length of 1.24 Gpc, and is three times larger than the upper limit of the homogeneity scale.[11] However, the scale of the individual quasars of this structure does not have a chance correlation to each other, providing the evidence of the impossibility of this structure.[12]

The Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, is more than 8 times larger than the scale,[4] and so greatly exceeds the homogeneity scale. In accordance of this, the structure, would still be heterogeneous as compared to the other parts of the universe even at the scale of the "End of Greatness", thereby putting the cosmological principle into further doubt.

Evolutionary problem

I have no idea how something that big could have evolved.

Istvan Horvath, University of Public Service, Budapest, Hungary.[4]

The structure also poses a problem to the current models of the universe's evolution. At a distance of 10 billion light years means that we see the structure as it was 10 billion years ago, or roughly 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang. The current models of the universe's evolution, however, do not allow the said structure to form in just a mere 3 billion years. The structure was itself too big, and too complex, to exist so early in the universe. There is currently no existing model to explain the existence of the structure.[4]

Evidence of a cosmic web

Such large structures like the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall may form part of the vast intergalactic cosmic web, an endless continuous sheet of galaxies and dark matter. Although this web was never directly observed, the relatively large sizes of structures in the nearby universe provides the possibility of the existence of this web. Such gigaparsec-scale structures, including the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, may be the intersections of smaller subfilaments within this vast structure, where there are overdensities of galaxies connecting other filaments within this vast web. If verified, the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall will be one of the first evidences of the existence of this web.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Horvath, Istvan; Hakkila, Jon; Bagoly, Zsolt (2014). "Possible structure in the GRB sky distribution at redshift two". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 561: id.L12. arXiv:1401.0533. Bibcode:2014A&A...561L..12H. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201323020. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Horvath I., Hakkila J., and Bagoly Z. (2013). "The largest structure of the Universe, defined by Gamma-Ray Bursts". 7th Huntsville Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium, GRB 2013: paper 33 in eConf Proceedings C1304143. arXiv:1311.1104. Bibcode:2013arXiv1311.1104H. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ a b "Redshift-distance relation".
  4. ^ a b c d e "Universe's Largest Structure is a Cosmic Conundrum". discovery. 2013-11-19. Retrieved 2013-11-22. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help)
  5. ^ Data source http://lyra.berkeley.edu/grbox/grbox.php
  6. ^ Yadav, Jaswant (25 February 2010). "Fractal dimension as a measure of the scale of Homogeneity". Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 405 (3): 2009–2015. arXiv:1001.0617. Bibcode:2010MNRAS.405.2009Y. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16612.x. Retrieved 15 January 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ Hogg, D.W. et al., (May 2005) "Cosmic Homogeneity Demonstrated with Luminous Red Galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 624: 54–58. arXiv:astro-ph/0411197. Bibcode:2005ApJ...624...54H. doi:10.1086/429084.
  8. ^ Scrimgeour, Morag I. et al., (May 2012) "The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: the transition to large-scale cosmic homogeneity". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 425 (1): 116–134. arXiv:1205.6812. Bibcode: 2012MNRAS.425...116S. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21402.x.
  9. ^ Nadathur, Seshadri, (July 2013) "Seeing patterns in noise: gigaparsec-scale 'structures' that do not violate homogeneity". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in press. arXiv:1306.1700. Bibcode: 2013MNRAS.tmp.1690N. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stt1028.
  10. ^ Gott, J. Richard, III; et al. (May 2005). "A Map of the Universe". The Astrophysical Journal. 624 (2): 463–484. arXiv:astro-ph/0310571. Bibcode:2005ApJ...624..463G. doi:10.1086/428890Template:Inconsistent citations{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  11. ^ Clowes, Roger; Harris; Raghunathan; Campusano; Soechting; Graham (2012-01-11). "A structure in the early Universe at z ∼ 1.3 that exceeds the homogeneity scale of the R-W concordance cosmology". Monthly notices of the royal astronomical society. 1211 (4): 6256. arXiv:1211.6256. Bibcode:2012arXiv1211.6256C. doi:10.1093/mnras/sts497. Retrieved 14 January 2013. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  12. ^ Gaite, Jose, Dominguez, Alvaro and Perez-Mercader, Juan (August 1999) "The fractal distribution of galaxies and the transition to homogeneity". The Astrophysical Journal 522: L5-L8. arXiv:astroph/9812132. Bibcode: 1999ApJ...522L...5G. doi: 10.1086/312204.
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