Galaxy ring discovery challenges thinking on universe | BBC News

Let’s turn though to a fascinating story because scientists have discovered a gigantic ring shaped structure in space which is so big it challenges our understanding of the universe experts at the University of Central Lancashire say it’s 1.3 billion light years in diameter and appears to be roughly 15 times the

Size of the Moon as seen from Earth structures that that big shouldn’t exist according to one of the guiding principles of astronomy well I’m delighted to say let’s speak to Alexia Lopez the PHD student at the University of Central Lancashire who identified what has been called the Big Ring you

Are smiling broadly I’m not surprised I mean what does it feel like making a discovery like this um yeah I mean it’s it’s amazing it is surreal um you know we stumble across these discoveries accidentally so it’s so fun to be able to you know write up

Analysis on these kind of um discover discoveries so yeah it’s really exciting now my brain is clearly smaller than yours so you better just explain in in simple terms what you’ve actually discovered so I’ve discovered a really massive structure in the universe so these are the biggest things um in our

Universe um so it’s made up of galaxies and Galaxy clusters and it creates this really big ring shape and how did you find that because as is pretty obvious nobody else has stumbled across this so how did you actually do it yeah so I was using a h a

Relatively unique tool to find this large scale structure um so the method uses these really bright sources of light known as quazar and then when we measure the light from these quazar it can tell us about um things that are in between the quazar and O so when I

Measured um I use all these quazar spe Spectra and so it tells us about all these intervening H systems so it tells us about where these galaxies are so you can imagine the um it’s kind of like looking at bright spotlights in a dark room so the spotlights are highlighting

To us where all these galaxies and Galaxy clusters are so without the without the bright spotlights without the quazar we would usually not be able to see these galaxies and Galaxy clusters so so that’s how you did it just again in simple terms terms explain why it challenges what we thought we

Knew well um in order to make the mathematics simple um to uh model our universe we make some assumptions and one of those assumptions is that on large scales we should see that the Universe and the matter distribution in the universe looks smooth everywhere and so this essentially puts this limit on

How big we should find structures existing so when we find these large scale structures these huge large scale structures like the big ring or the giant AR these are so big that we’re now not seeing this um statistical homogeneity we’re not seeing this smoothness in the universe so it does

Challenge this cosmological principle it challenges our found founding assumptions on what the standard model is built on so so if those absolutely Basics that we thought we knew aren’t necessarily what is actually the truth what sort of questions then get thrown up well I mean this is this is the

Biggest question um what what do we do now I mean I mean really we need to start thinking about if we should be using alternative models of cosmology so these are proposed um by lots of different people including a Nobel Prize winner Roger Penrose so he has his alternative theory of cosmology which

Actually you would detect circular features in the sky in the CNB sky um so maybe it means we need to start really taking these alternative theories in cosmology seriously and also seriously be questioning whether our standard model um can hold if the basic assumptions are proving to be um challenged

UK scientists have discovered a gigantic, ring-shaped structure in space.

It is 1.3bn light-years in diameter and appears to be roughly 15 times the size of the Moon in the night sky as seen from Earth.

Named the Big Ring by the astronomers, it is made up of galaxies and galaxy clusters.

The team at the University of Central Lancashire said that it is so big it challenges our understanding of the universe.

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20 comments
  1. The 'haven't you done well pretty girl?' manner in which this is presented & the 'my brain is clearly smaller than yours' comment are typical of the patronising, dumbed down news media, do they want the public to think that science is 'not for them', something beyond their reach & concern? Yes, they do.

  2. You can get on the news by doing tik toks you know? Dont need to study Space in university, get a Phd and spend your life looking at stars. You can earn thousands by just uploading 30 second clips. Shameful how women are represented in leading fields.

  3. There is no space. There’s only time. Time is the fabric of the universe. Time is everything and everything is time. We experienced time through our star the sun. Think about it. Take your time. While you are thinking, remember oxygen is consciousness. Don’t test nature by holding your breath. Breathe! While breathing realize that our existence is dependent upon our star, the sun. We are our star!

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