Largest Object in the Universe Discovered

prostoalex writes "Quick, think of the largest object you can imagine. Whatever your imagination delivered it probably wasn't an 'enormous amoeba-like structure 200 light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas,' a newly found object, as USA Today reports."

That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[nincehelser]

But what's a few orders of magnitude among friends?

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[kinnell]

...which is about as big as 12 gazillion Volkswagen Beetles

"Largest Object in the Universe Discovered"

[zephc]

Yeah, in my pants! Giggity!

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[TheSpoom]

Please, please, if you can't measure in Libraries of Congress, I have no time for you.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[roseblood]

Up to 200Million from 200? That's BLOATWARE if I've ever seen it.

Microsoft OS used to work on a 8Mhz machine and now will require a 4Ghz machine(4000Mhz) to run well(MS Vista.) That's only a 500x increase. The 1,000,000 time increase here makes that look like a drop in the bucket!

The universe making MS look good! Gotta love it.

Re:One of the main purposes of Vista...

[Hoi Polloi]

A very detailed and thorough comment. Too bad you posted it to the wrong article.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[B'Trey]

Playing sort of fast and loose with the definition of "object," aren't they? I generally think of an object as a single item, not a collective. If this is an "object," then why isn't the universe itself an object? And if the universe is an object, then it's necessarily larger than this one.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[qeveren]

Define 'single item'. Everything is made up of smaller bits in groups, bound by forces, until you get down to the quark-lepton scale.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[Chmcginn]

I think part of the definition of "single item" has to include the difference between a big sheet of glass and a big pile of shards. It's chemically and physically connected - if I grab the edge of the sheet, and lift, the whole thing moves, as a single unit, unless I'm pulling hard enough to break it. But if I grab the top shard in a pile, no matter how gently I pull, it's not moving the bottom shard.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[monoqlith]

The large object being considered here may not be chemically connected(although it is, locally), but it certainly is physically connected - the entire thing moves together because it's bound up by gravity. So if you move one piece, (assuming you move it slowly enough) the whole thing will move.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[Hoi Polloi]

I think they mean that the individual galaxies and gas clouds of the object are gravitationally bound to one another. They measure the velocities of the objects and can see that they are less than the escape velocity for the mass as a whole, just like the stars in a globular cluster.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[MrNaz]

Agreed. On a cosmic level we have no way of knowing if the known universe is just a small part of a larger structure. As such, all of the known universe could be "single object", so lets be serious about the way we define things, especially in physics.

In my opinion, TFA is a load of crud. An "object" is a single item. To use an astrophysics definition, it is a parcel of matter of contiguous structure bound by atomic or molecular forces (but not magnetic or gravitic) incorporating solid or liquid state mat

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[jc42]

Well, maybe. But there are a number of examples where it turns out to be very useful to treat a collection of physically disconnected objects as an object. The most common example in astronomy is probably a galaxy, which in many respects acts like a single, organized "object", despite the fact that it's actually trillions of separate objects loosely bound by gravity. And we usually treat our Solar System as an object (which contains four smaller objects of similar structure).

My favorite example is biological. We have no trouble viewing colonial organisms like a sponge or a coral head or a Portuguese Man-o-War as a single "object", even as a single "individual". But biologists have found that treating a hive of bees or ants (or any eusocial creatures) as a single "individual" helps greatly in understanding them. True, these individuals have a lot of physically disconnected bodies. But they are bound by effective communication systems, mostly chemical, partly visual and auditory, and they really do behave as a single colonial individual.

This mostly just illustrates that our definitions of "individual" and "object" might need a bit of work. And the best definition might vary somewhat depending on your field of study.

We know pretty well that treating the "Gaia" concept as a real individual is mostly just silly. But that's at the high extreme; a single animal such as a human certainly is an "individual" although we arose from what was originally a colonial collection of single-cell organisms 600 million years or so back. Somewhere in this continuum we find borderline cases like ants, bees, termites, and mole rats, which are borderline cases that confound our definitions.

But the universe doesn't have to file things according to our definitions. Rather, it's up to us to find concepts that work, and give them names that work.

It's likely that, for astronomers, it will turn out useful to treat this collection of galaxies and assorted other stuff as a gravitationally bound "object". Or maybe, like the recent discussion of the term "planet", astronomers might decide that this was a bad idea and will revise the terminoloy appropriately.

I think they'd have been better off calling it a "structure". But IANAA.

In Slashdot units...

[Bogtha]

200 light years is only 197 thousand trillion London bus lengths wide, whereas 200 million light years is 197 billion trillion London bus lengths wide. That's a lot of busses!

Re:In Slashdot units...

[k_187]

yes but how many rodsto the hogshead is it?

Re:In Slashdot units...

[jdbartlett]

The uh, old person's remarks will be stricken from the record.

Move over metric system, a new rule arrives: London buses. Standard rule: 1 London bus = #4 from Angel, Islington.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[tomhudson]

Its because he was looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

The Genius of Gene Roddenberry

[reporter]

The article [usatoday.com] by "USA Today" states, " An enormous amoeba-like structure 200 million light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas is the largest known object in the universe, scientists say ".

40 years ago, Gene Roddenberry, the creator of "Star Trek", already predicted the eventual discovery of space amoeba. Check out the episode (from "Star Trek: The Original Series") titled "The Immunity Syndrome [usatoday.com]." According to the synopsis by Wikipedia, "The huge expenditure of ship's energy attra

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[drsquare]

How big is a million compared to a light year?

Gee, Captain...

[Zontar The Mindless]

It looks like we've got the Immunity Syndrome [trekguide.com].

200 MILLION light-years wide...

[kclittle]

... just a minor nit.

Re:200 MILLION light-years wide...

[Cheapy]

Once you get to that distance, does it really matter if they forget the million? It's going to be extremely far anyways.

Re:200 MILLION light-years wide...

[Cecil]

Well, yes, it does, if you're going to call it the largest object in the universe. There are already many things that are thousands or millions of light years across. 200 light years just isn't terribly impressive.

Re:Mark parent redundant

[kclittle]

Look at the time-stamp of the "redundant" messages -- there's a clue there... :)

200 != 200,000,000

[Mr. Slippery]

Something 200 light years across is not big (on galactic scales). TFA says the structure here is 200 million LY.

Re:200 != 200,000,000

[PhxBlue]

What, you want submitters and editors to start actually reading TFAs now?

No way

[Eightyford]

It's even bigger than Bono's ego!

Re:No way

[GundamFan]

Nothing is bigger than Bono's ego.

Way!

[NickFortune]

I believe the object to be none other than Tony Blair's Sense Of His Own Importance.

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Balmer's ego doesn't even compare with the size of his internal void.

ballmer.c: error: invalid application of `sizeof' to a void type

Wow, it really doesn't compare! (I'm so sorry...)

Submission is wrong

[nefele]

First of all, the structure is 200 million light years across. The distance from the Sun to the center of our Galaxy is about 26,000 light years, so 200 light years would not be very impressive in comparison.

Also, the article is somewhat misleading itself, as the blob isn't really a homogenous structure. It's just a group of galaxies packed together more closely than other clusters. So it isn't really that much different from other parts of the Universe.

Re:Submission is wrong

[Daniel Dvorkin]

It's just a group of galaxies packed together more closely than other clusters.

And a galaxy is just a group of stars packed together, etc.

Re:Submission is wrong

[__aaclcg7560]

So it isn't really that much different from other parts of the Universe.

You do realize that the Galatic Real Estate Agency will be sending out a team of Space Ninjas after you for trying ruin the market? Remember, in real estate, it's location, location, location!

Re:Submission is wrong

[cswiger2005]

If you hunt down the actual article, they've also been able to see huge formations of gas from which the galaxies formed (presumably), so the structure includes more than just close-packed galaxies:

"A team of astronomers using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea has discovered giant, three-dimensional filaments of galaxies extending across 200 million light-years of space. These filaments, which formed a mere 2 billion years after the birth of the universe, are the largest-known structures ever disc

Remember

[Eightyford]

Remember that was the largest known object in the universe millions and millions of years ago. Who knows what it would look like today.

Wow,

[Megaweapon]

it's almost as big as my wife!

Re:Wow,

[kid_wonder]

Sal [wikipedia.org], c'mon enough already [tripod.com]

Large Packets of Gas?

[vistic]

Shouldn't the large regions of gas (they say some bigger than the Andromeda Galaxy in dimensions) collapse under gravity and make stars, galaxies, other things? Unless I guess the gas is super hot and full of energy already.

Then again for how far away this is, maybe it already has and we won't be able to see it for a long time. The article doesn't say how far away this is in relation to us... but it does say it's 200 million light years across.

Re:Large Packets of Gas?

[MindStalker]

Well as stated by others the milky way is 90,000 or .09 million light years across.

SO if its 2000 times as big as our galaxy and we are just NOW being able to see it. Its probably REALLY REALLY far away.. I would guess! :)

Another note our cluster of galaxies called the Virgo cluster which containes most of the visible galaxies such as Andromeda is 100 million light years across.

Re:Large Packets of Gas?

[cswiger2005]

Shouldn't the large regions of gas (they say some bigger than the Andromeda Galaxy in dimensions) collapse under gravity and make stars, galaxies, other things? Unless I guess the gas is super hot and full of energy already.

Sure-- that's just what most astronomers expect happened. Remember that when we look really far away, we're also looking really far back in time, back far enough that we're starting to be able to see somethings about the universe before many of the galaxies which exist today existed

We're doomed

[lysergic.acid]

They're here already...

The filaments were recently seen using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea.

Atleast they seem more interested in using our high-powered telescopes than enslaving mankind.

Vista???

[Anonymous Coward]

"The structure we discovered and others like are probably the precursors of the largest structures we see today which contain multiple clusters of galaxies"
So they found Windows Vista code repository...
Largest object in the universe and full of hot gas :D

Large pockets of gas?..Amend the bible?

[plasmacutter]

And yea on the 7th day G-d rested, after taking his gas-x ; )

*ps.. i am SOOO going to hell!

Re:Large pockets of gas?..Amend the bible?

[starm_]

Are you reffering to this [religiousfreaks.com]?

Couldn't resist

[Toreo asesino]

"That's no moon......" /starwars

Size 42

[Doc Ruby]

The largest object that I can imagine quickly is the Universe [uncyclopedia.org] . It's taking longer to imagine the Multiverse as a single object, but it's even more fun.

Re:Size 42

[MindStalker]

Thank you, sadly I've never visited the uncyclopedia before.. Wow what a vast storage of unknowledge I was missing!!!

Re:Size 42

[Doc Ruby]

Or you're using too much duct tape.

An enormous amoeba-like structure...

[ptelligence]

Stuck to the lens of the telescope.

Re:An enormous amoeba-like structure...

[g2devi]

Actually, the picture provided in the article is a bit out of focus and lacks some details:
http://images.usatoday.com/tech/_photos/2006/07/27 /subaru-large.jpg [usatoday.com]

Here's a higher resolution picture that includes the missing pieces:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flying_Spaghett i_Monster.jpg [wikipedia.org]

The Wall?

[Zarhan]

How does this compare to The Great Wall [wikipedia.org], discovered as a structure in 1989?

Re:The Wall?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?numb er=604 [cornell.edu], the Great Wall is 600 M light-years across.

Something Bigger

[tawhaki]

I imagined an enormous amoeba-like structure 201 million light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas.

I know its name!!!

[Abreu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yog-Sothoth [wikipedia.org]

We are doomed!

Here come the "your moms" jokes

[varmint jerky]

n/t

Space is big

[Yvan256]

"Space is big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."--Douglas Adams

Re:Space is big

[CaptnMArk]

This typo requires a trip to the Total Perspective Vortex.

Thought this was an Enormous Mutant Star Goat

[billstewart]

That's what they told me it was - that's why I got on this ship along with all the other telephone sanitizers...

Largest Object?

[Shadyman]

What, isn't that supposed to be "Your momma"?

The star of death?

[freaker_TuC]

It's probably that Deathstar [wikipedia.org] they have been warning us on television about.

Guess it's time to bow to our Sith overlords before it's too late...

I sense you have lost faith in the dark side if you mod this down.

Press release

[Jugalator]

... and here's the actual press release [subarutelescope.org] for the discovery in case you want some more meat than given by the simplified USA Today article.

All Hail the FSB

[drgroove]

All Hail - the Discovery of the Flying Spaghetti Monster [wikipedia.org] has finally occurred! Pirates and Pastafarians, rejoyce!

Big stuff

[eebra82]

Man, to find a thing of that kind is like finding a needle in an enormous amoeba-like structure.

Just an amoeba?

[malvidin]

What's next? A giant space crystal coming to attack Orion?

Re:Just an amoeba?

[deke_2503]

Actually it was a reference to Microprose's early 90's computer game, Master of Orion [wikipedia.org].

Largest Object...

[foxxer]

I bet it was written in java.

The Immunity Syndrome

[rtobyr]

I've seen this before. The only way to protect ourselves is to detonate an antimatter bomb [wikipedia.org] inside its nucleus.

What makes a 'single' structure

[lawpoop]

What is the criteria by which we call something a 'single' structure? If it's stuff bound by gravity, doesn't gravitational force equally attract everything in the universe? Do we consider stuff bound to itself by one of the other primary forces a single entity?

Re:What makes a 'single' structure

[timeOday]

I agree, I don't see how this counts as an "object." I'll go with your definition in terms of other forces, though as with any definition (outside mathematics), there are sure to be corner cases and exceptions.

Re:What makes a 'single' structure

[cswiger2005]

That's a good question, but yeah, basicly, to an astronomer, a "single" structure is a group of objects that are gravitationally bound such that they "stay together" when observed over long periods of time.

One of the major activities of astronomy is to try to observe things long enough to understand their normal fluctuations-- based on the earth's rotation and revolution around the Sun, observations made 6 months apart give one a 2AU baseline to look for parallax, which can provide relatively exact position

Obvious?!?!?!?!

[fabu10u$]

Did nobody else think of CowboyNeal, or are all those jokes getting modded down?

Fixed...

[Hosiah]

"Largest Object in the Universe discovered."

Whoops, sorry. Forgot to zip up...

Re:Fixed...

[Dunbal]

Whoops, sorry. Forgot to zip up...

      We're talking about your mouth here right? :P

Re:Fixed...

[mgabrys_sf]

I don't think you want to use the word "FIXED" in that sentance. Just a tip (or snip).

"My Gog, it's Full of Farts!"

[surfcow]

Blame Taco Bell.

Oblig. question:

[Eudial]

Which brings us to the obligatory question: Is it a bird?! Is it a plane?!

Come on /.

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Hundreds of people have people have pointed out the error. This time it's not some slight error but the biggest error in the history of journalism. It needs to be updated. Don't any of the editors look at the comments? Are teh standards at /. really this low? This is even worse than CNN reporting that the space shuttle was traveling at 3 times the speed of light. Come on! WAKE UP!

Actually...

[dr_strang]

That's exactly what I was thinking of.

Why 'theoretical big bang' though?

[cruachan]

Interesting that it uses the line 'theoretical big bang' though. Am I being paranoid here or is USA Today covering itself against Creationists? Just seems rather odd to underline theoretical like that.

Re:Why 'theoretical big bang' though?

[Improv]

There are non-big-bang cosmological theories that are not tied to (christian or otherwise) pseudoscience. This was probably meant to recognise that there are non-fringe, non-religiously-inspired other theories out there that some sane folks consider viable.

Standard Issue Joke, Ahoy

[stonecypher]

And I for one welcome our new Immunity Syndrome overlords.

Not largest

[mypalmike]

The largest object in the universe has to be an instance of some MFC class.

It's here, now what?

[Tablizer]

That Beowulf cluster we all kept imagining together has finally arrived.

Sure, it sounds big

[Iamthefallen]

But to properly visualize it, how many football fields or libraries of congress is it?

The largest object

[Mr. Firewall]

"Quick, think of the largest object you can imagine ... galaxies and large bubbles of gas...."

Michael Moore.

If this thing combines...

[stigmato]

If this thing combines with the smug cloud from George Clooney's Academy Award acceptance speech, we're all doomed!

Get ready...

[WhatDoIKnow]

I, for one, welcome our new multi-hundred-thousand light year diameter, bubbly gaseous amoeba-like alpha blob overlords.

:wq

Re:This reminds me

[bsander]

Fear the coming of the Great White Handkerchief!

Re:This reminds me

[LouisZepher]

It is interesting that TFA has an "image" of the object coloured with Arkleseizure-Phlegm-green...

Oblig. Futurama response

[Dachannien]

a small piece of our nails might be a universe too...

Farnsworth 420: Dig it! All of you fitting in this box is, like, seriously freaked up!
Farnsworth 1: Nonsense! Why, there's a whole universe in there.
Farnsworth 420: Dude, there's a universe in all of us.
Amy 420: (puts her arms around Farnsworth 420) Right on, Professor Freaksworth!
Farnsworth 420 offers Farnsworth A a flower.
Farnsworth A: Get a job!

Wow.

[LKM]

Wow. I see MIB counts as a philosophy lesson nowadays.

Re:This reminds me

[thebes]

But by the very nature of the supposition that we are part of something larger, that means that the larger thing may not be bound by our own rules.

Problem with pseudo-scientists

[MisterSquid]

The problem with pseudoscientists such as yourself is that your thinking is limited by what you know.

So what if the fastest information can travel is the speed of light? If this 200-million-light year-wide amoeba is, say, a small part of the being, problems of entropy and decay may not be relevant. How long will the larger structures of such a being persist? What are the structures of such a being?

Imagine a species of "being" existing on the scale of what we call the quantum. Applying what is knowable about the world of the quantum to the world of the molecular would mean that our macro world could not exist. Such beings would say, "the ravages of quantum mechanics and particle decay and instability would not allow such beings to exist." They would be both right and wrong. The world we normally observe cannot be extrapolated from the world of the subatomic. Lucky for us, our world is an empirical fact.

Concerning the grandparent's ideas which you so cavalierly dismiss according to what you know about your sub-universe scale, those ideas are unproven and perhaps unlikely. What is not unlikely is the empirical fact that our universe is part of something whose dimensions and larger nature is UNKNOWABLE TO US

Re:Problem with pseudo-scientists

[MisterSquid]

Whose thinking ISN'T limited by what they know?

Everyone has limitations, but one of the beauties of the human mind is metacognition. The phenomenon of having expert knowledge prevent one from reinterpreting contrary data is referred to as "confirmation bias" which I recently read about in a blog post by Bob Sutton [typepad.com]. Sutton is a fairly renowned consultant.

In the above post, he refers to a phrase that should be familiar to many geeks, which is "strong opinions, weakly held." This is a very good approach to the study of science. Know what you know with near certainty, but the second you come across contrary evidence be ready to let everything go.

Really, it's just the idea that no one, really, knows anything. All knowledge is contingent and what little we think we know is probably wrong somewhere.

Re:This reminds me

[wondafucka]

I wish I could mod you down for being a rude jackass. Or at least for trying to link 5th graders and stoners.

I've got some stoner logic for you "Woah man, what if there was, like, this kind of person who was really smart, and like totally understood math and science concepts, but like, is totally stupid when it comes to dealing with people. Like they're just plain condescending and rude."

On the other hand, your logic for the existance of macro or micro organisms holds weight.

Re:The largest?

[MindStalker]

Well its all about prespective. From our distance it appears as one object. I'm sure if you asked a molecule if he was part of an object with the next molecule he would disagree. :)

Re:The largest?

[Dunbal]

It wouldn't be good for the object if they started firing missiles at each other.

      Bonds are broken; bonds are created. Free radicals come into existence, start mucking everything up and are eventually soaked up. And life goes on, one way or another.

Re:Obligatory...

[Dunbal]

Okay, it's big. But does it run Linux?

      No but it's almost big enough to store Vista.

Re:Would that not be the universe itself?

[LouisZepher]

The way they called a grouping of seperate objects a single object, then yes, the universe would itself be a "single" object. In that sense, the measurement of such reminds me of the following:

"You see, the computer that runs it is an advanced one. In fact, it is more powerful than the sum total of all the computers on this planet including -and this is the tricky part- including itself." - Professor "Reg" Chronitis, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency; Douglas Adams.

(I know, this is /. so just ab

Re:I don't really understand

[Dunbal]

How is it an object if it contains other objects?

      Just the same as you are an object, and contain other objects. You had lunch today right?