{"id":185218,"date":"2024-03-16T04:22:28","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T09:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/astronomers-puzzled-by-cosmic-megastructure-so-large-it-shouldnt-exist"},"modified":"2024-03-16T04:22:28","modified_gmt":"2024-03-16T09:22:28","slug":"astronomers-puzzled-by-cosmic-megastructure-so-large-it-shouldnt-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/astronomers-puzzled-by-cosmic-megastructure-so-large-it-shouldnt-exist","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers Puzzled by Cosmic Megastructure So Large It Shouldn\u2019t Exist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-puzzled-by-cosmic-megastructure-so-large-it-shouldnt-exist2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lurking some nine billion light years away from Earth is what appears to be a so-called cosmic megastructure in the shape of an enormous ring. It\u2019s so large that its existence should be impossible, according to new research <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/2024\/jan\/11\/newly-discovered-cosmic-megastructure-challenges-theories-of-the-universe\" class=\"\">reported on by <em><i>The Guardian<\/i><\/em><\/a>, challenging a fundamental assumption of our understanding of the Universe.<\/p>\n<p>Known as the \u201cBig Ring,\u201d the structure spans an astonishing 1.3 billion light years in diameter \u2014 a significant portion of the observable Universe\u2019s estimated size of 94 billion light years. By contrast, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/large-radio-galaxy-alcyoneus-discovery\" class=\"\">largest known galaxy<\/a> is a \u201cmere\u201d 16 million light years across. If it were visible in the night sky to the naked eye, the Big Ring would be equal in diameter to <i>fifteen<\/i> full moons. Succinctly put: it\u2019s unfathomably huge.<\/p>\n<p>The unpublished findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Thursday, add to a growing list of inexplicably large structures that remain confounding \u2014 if not controversial \u2014 to scientists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lurking some nine billion light years away from Earth is what appears to be a so-called cosmic megastructure in the shape of an enormous ring. It\u2019s so large that its existence should be impossible, according to new research reported on by The Guardian, challenging a fundamental assumption of our understanding of the Universe. Known as [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}