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58-555: The supercluster includes four large galaxy clusters in the Centaurus part, also known as the "4 clusters'' filament, or '' 4 clusters strand '': The filament which also includes the major cluster Abell S753 and exends up to around 260  Mly (80  Mpc ) to reach the rich galaxy cluster Abell 3581 . The Antlia Wall , also known as the Antlia Strand , Hydra Wall , Hydra-Antlia wall , Hydra-Antlia extension , and

116-500: A concentration of mass equivalent to tens of thousands of galaxies. The Great Attractor, discovered in 1986, lies at a distance of between 150 million and 250 million light-years in the direction of the Hydra and Centaurus constellations . In its vicinity there is a preponderance of large old galaxies, many of which are colliding with their neighbours, or radiating large amounts of radio waves. In 1987, astronomer R. Brent Tully of

174-550: A given comoving distance is defined to lie within the "observable universe" if we can receive signals emitted by the galaxy at any age in its history, say, a signal sent from the galaxy only 500 million years after the Big Bang. Because of the universe's expansion, there may be some later age at which a signal sent from the same galaxy can never reach the Earth at any point in the infinite future, so, for example, we might never see what

232-400: A higher-dimensional analogue of the 2D surface of a sphere that is finite in area but has no edge. It is plausible that the galaxies within the observable universe represent only a minuscule fraction of the galaxies in the universe. According to the theory of cosmic inflation initially introduced by Alan Guth and D. Kazanas , if it is assumed that inflation began about 10 seconds after

290-490: A phenomenon that has been referred to as the End of Greatness . The organization of structure arguably begins at the stellar level, though most cosmologists rarely address astrophysics on that scale. Stars are organized into galaxies , which in turn form galaxy groups , galaxy clusters , superclusters , sheets, walls and filaments , which are separated by immense voids , creating a vast foam-like structure sometimes called

348-559: Is 4.8% of the total critical density or 4.08 × 10  kg/m . To convert this density to mass we must multiply by volume, a value based on the radius of the "observable universe". Since the universe has been expanding for 13.8 billion years, the comoving distance (radius) is now about 46.6 billion light-years. Thus, volume ( ⁠ 4 / 3 ⁠ πr ) equals 3.58 × 10  m and the mass of ordinary matter equals density ( 4.08 × 10  kg/m ) times volume ( 3.58 × 10  m ) or 1.46 × 10  kg . Sky surveys and mappings of

406-406: Is a maximum distance, called the particle horizon , beyond which nothing can be detected, as the signals could not have reached us yet. Sometimes astrophysicists distinguish between the observable universe and the visible universe. The former includes signals since the end of the inflationary epoch , while the latter includes only signals emitted since recombination . According to calculations,

464-521: Is also the density for which the expansion of the universe is poised between continued expansion and collapse. From the Friedmann equations , the value for ρ c {\displaystyle \rho _{\text{c}}} critical density, is: where G is the gravitational constant and H = H 0 is the present value of the Hubble constant . The value for H 0 , as given by

522-422: Is apparent. The superclusters and filaments seen in smaller surveys are randomized to the extent that the smooth distribution of the universe is visually apparent. It was not until the redshift surveys of the 1990s were completed that this scale could accurately be observed. Another indicator of large-scale structure is the ' Lyman-alpha forest '. This is a collection of absorption lines that appear in

580-414: Is exactly equal to the reachable limit (16 billion light-years) added to the current visibility limit (46 billion light-years). Both popular and professional research articles in cosmology often use the term "universe" to mean "observable universe". This can be justified on the grounds that we can never know anything by direct observation about any part of the universe that is causally disconnected from

638-475: Is required in describing structures on a cosmic scale because they are often different from how they appear. Gravitational lensing can make an image appear to originate in a different direction from its real source, when foreground objects curve surrounding spacetime (as predicted by general relativity ) and deflect passing light rays. Rather usefully, strong gravitational lensing can sometimes magnify distant galaxies, making them easier to detect. Weak lensing by

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696-443: Is therefore estimated to be about 46.5 billion light-years. Using the critical density and the diameter of the observable universe, the total mass of ordinary matter in the universe can be calculated to be about 1.5 × 10  kg . In November 2018, astronomers reported that extragalactic background light (EBL) amounted to 4 × 10 photons. As the universe's expansion is accelerating, all currently observable objects, outside

754-527: Is unknown, and it may be infinite in extent. Some parts of the universe are too far away for the light emitted since the Big Bang to have had enough time to reach Earth or space-based instruments, and therefore lie outside the observable universe. In the future, light from distant galaxies will have had more time to travel, so one might expect that additional regions will become observable. Regions distant from observers (such as us) are expanding away faster than

812-749: The Hydra-Antlia filament , is a filament that emeges from the Centaurus Cluster , passes under the Zone of Avoidance (ZOA) as the " Puppis filament ", to link up the Lepus Cloud . This filament then passes though a region containing the NGC 1600 Group before crossing the boundary where the gravitional flows of galaxies between the Laniakea and Perseus–Pisces superclusters diverge to link up with

870-621: The University of Hawaii 's Institute of Astronomy identified what he called the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex , a structure one billion light-years long and 150 million light-years across in which, he claimed, the Local Supercluster is embedded. The most distant astronomical object identified (as of August of 2024) is a galaxy classified as JADES-GS-z14-0 . In 2009, a gamma ray burst , GRB 090423 ,

928-474: The grains of beach sand on planet Earth . Other estimates are in the hundreds of billions rather than trillions. The estimated total number of stars in an inflationary universe (observed and unobserved) is 10 . Assuming the mass of ordinary matter is about 1.45 × 10  kg as discussed above, and assuming all atoms are hydrogen atoms (which are about 74% of all atoms in the Milky Way by mass),

986-415: The intergalactic medium (IGM). However, it excludes dark matter and dark energy . This quoted value for the mass of ordinary matter in the universe can be estimated based on critical density. The calculations are for the observable universe only as the volume of the whole is unknown and may be infinite. Critical density is the energy density for which the universe is flat. If there is no dark energy, it

1044-466: The " proper distance " used in both Hubble's law and in defining the size of the observable universe. Cosmologist Ned Wright argues against using this measure. The proper distance for a redshift of 8.2 would be about 9.2 Gpc , or about 30 billion light-years. The limit of observability in the universe is set by cosmological horizons which limit—based on various physical constraints—the extent to which information can be obtained about various events in

1102-484: The "cosmic web". Prior to 1989, it was commonly assumed that virialized galaxy clusters were the largest structures in existence, and that they were distributed more or less uniformly throughout the universe in every direction. However, since the early 1980s, more and more structures have been discovered. In 1983, Adrian Webster identified the Webster LQG , a large quasar group consisting of 5 quasars. The discovery

1160-557: The Big Bang and that the pre-inflation size of the universe was approximately equal to the speed of light times its age, that would suggest that at present the entire universe's size is at least 1.5 × 10 light-years—at least 3 × 10 times the radius of the observable universe. If the universe is finite but unbounded, it is also possible that the universe is smaller than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated

1218-754: The Centaurus Supercluster (Hydra–Centaurus) is just a lobe in a greater supercluster, Laniakea , that is centered on the Great Attractor . That supercluster would include the Virgo Supercluster, therefore including the Milky Way where Earth resides. Groups and clusters of galaxies The observable universe is a spherical region of the universe consisting of all matter that can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes and exploratory probes at

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1276-449: The Earth if the event is less than 16 billion light-years away, but the signal will never reach the Earth if the event is further away. The space before this cosmic event horizon can be called "reachable universe", that is all galaxies closer than that could be reached if we left for them today, at the speed of light; all galaxies beyond that are unreachable. Simple observation will show the future visibility limit (62 billion light-years)

1334-426: The Earth, although many credible theories require a total universe much larger than the observable universe. No evidence exists to suggest that the boundary of the observable universe constitutes a boundary on the universe as a whole, nor do any of the mainstream cosmological models propose that the universe has any physical boundary in the first place. However, some models propose it could be finite but unbounded, like

1392-669: The European Space Agency's Planck Telescope, is H 0 = 67.15 kilometres per second per megaparsec. This gives a critical density of 0.85 × 10  kg/m , or about 5 hydrogen atoms per cubic metre. This density includes four significant types of energy/mass: ordinary matter (4.8%), neutrinos (0.1%), cold dark matter (26.8%), and dark energy (68.3%). Although neutrinos are Standard Model particles, they are listed separately because they are ultra-relativistic and hence behave like radiation rather than like matter. The density of ordinary matter, as measured by Planck,

1450-620: The Giant Void mentioned above. Another large-scale structure is the SSA22 Protocluster , a collection of galaxies and enormous gas bubbles that measures about 200 million light-years across. In 2011, a large quasar group was discovered, U1.11 , measuring about 2.5 billion light-years across. On January 11, 2013, another large quasar group, the Huge-LQG , was discovered, which was measured to be four billion light-years across,

1508-904: The Lepus Cloud are part of a substantial filament known as the Centaurus–Puppis–PP Filament that extends around 420  Mly (130  Mpc ) from the Centaurus Cluster all the way to the Perseus–Pisces supercluster. The Centaurus–Puppis–PP Filament along with the Southern Supercluster Strand which contains the Eridanus-Fornax-Dorado Filament and the Telescopium−Grus Cloud , are part of wall that makes up

1566-601: The Perseus–Pisces supercluster at a distance of around 420  Mly (130  Mpc ) from the Centaurus Cluster. The filament contains two major clusters: In 2014, it was revealed that the Antlia Wall along with the rest of the Hydra–Centaurus supercluster is connected to the Perseus–Pisces Supercluster. Later in 2017, Pomarède et.al identified based on the flow of galaxies that the Antlia Wall along with

1624-679: The U.K., of light from the brightest part of this web, surrounding and illuminated by a cluster of forming galaxies, acting as cosmic flashlights for intercluster medium hydrogen fluorescence via Lyman-alpha emissions. In 2021, an international team, headed by Roland Bacon from the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (France), reported the first observation of diffuse extended Lyman-alpha emission from redshift 3.1 to 4.5 that traced several cosmic web filaments on scales of 2.5−4  cMpc (comoving mega-parsecs), in filamentary environments outside massive structures typical of web nodes. Some caution

1682-563: The central clusters, which are 150 to 200 million light years away, several smaller clusters belong to the group. Within the proximity of this supercluster lies the Great Attractor , dominated by the Norma Cluster (Abell 3627). This massive cluster of galaxies exerts a large gravitational force, causing all matter within 50 Mpc to experience a bulk flow of 600 km/s toward the Norma Cluster. A 2014 announcement says that

1740-479: The centre of the Hydra–Centaurus Supercluster , a gravitational anomaly called the Great Attractor affects the motion of galaxies over a region hundreds of millions of light-years across. These galaxies are all redshifted , in accordance with Hubble's law . This indicates that they are receding from us and from each other, but the variations in their redshift are sufficient to reveal the existence of

1798-489: The constellation Boötes from observations captured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey . The End of Greatness is an observational scale discovered at roughly 100  Mpc (roughly 300 million light-years) where the lumpiness seen in the large-scale structure of the universe is homogenized and isotropized in accordance with the cosmological principle . At this scale, no pseudo-random fractalness

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1856-421: The current comoving distance to particles from which the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) was emitted, which represents the radius of the visible universe, is about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light-years). The comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light-years), about 2% larger. The radius of the observable universe

1914-586: The distance to that matter at the time the light was emitted, we may first note that according to the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric , which is used to model the expanding universe, if we receive light with a redshift of z , then the scale factor at the time the light was originally emitted is given by a ( t ) = 1 1 + z {\displaystyle a(t)={\frac {1}{1+z}}} . WMAP nine-year results combined with other measurements give

1972-545: The edge of the observable universe is about 14.26 giga parsecs (46.5 billion light-years or 4.40 × 10  m) in any direction. The observable universe is thus a sphere with a diameter of about 28.5 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years or 8.8 × 10  m). Assuming that space is roughly flat (in the sense of being a Euclidean space ), this size corresponds to a comoving volume of about 1.22 × 10  Gpc ( 4.22 × 10  Gly or 3.57 × 10  m ). These are distances now (in cosmological time ), not distances at

2030-635: The edge of the observable universe is the age of the universe times the speed of light , 13.8 billion light years. This is the distance that a photon emitted shortly after the Big Bang, such as one from the cosmic microwave background , has traveled to reach observers on Earth. Because spacetime is curved, corresponding to the expansion of space , this distance does not correspond to the true distance at any moment in time. The observable universe contains as many as an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and, overall, as many as an estimated 10 stars – more stars (and, potentially, Earth-like planets) than all

2088-415: The environment of the cluster looks somewhat pinched if using redshifts to measure distance. The opposite effect is observed on galaxies already within a cluster: the galaxies have some random motion around the cluster center, and when these random motions are converted to redshifts, the cluster appears elongated. This creates a " finger of God "—the illusion of a long chain of galaxies pointed at Earth. At

2146-467: The estimated total number of atoms in the observable universe is obtained by dividing the mass of ordinary matter by the mass of a hydrogen atom. The result is approximately 10 hydrogen atoms, also known as the Eddington number . The mass of the observable universe is often quoted as 10  kg. In this context, mass refers to ordinary (baryonic) matter and includes the interstellar medium (ISM) and

2204-622: The front boundary of the Sculptor Void . Before 2017, it was not known that the Antlia Wall and the Lepus Cloud were part of the same structure, the Centaurus–Puppis–PP Filament. This is because the Centaurus–Puppis–PP Filament goes under the ZOA of the Milky Way , which caused parts of the filament to be obscured by the disk of the galaxy on the sky, resulting in the naming of the different visible pieces of filament. Apart from

2262-425: The future because light emitted by objects outside that limit could never reach the Earth. Note that, because the Hubble parameter is decreasing with time, there can be cases where a galaxy that is receding from Earth only slightly faster than light emits a signal that eventually reaches Earth. This future visibility limit is calculated at a comoving distance of 19 billion parsecs (62 billion light-years), assuming

2320-429: The galaxy looked like 10 billion years after the Big Bang, even though it remains at the same comoving distance less than that of the observable universe. This can be used to define a type of cosmic event horizon whose distance from the Earth changes over time. For example, the current distance to this horizon is about 16 billion light-years, meaning that a signal from an event happening at present can eventually reach

2378-433: The intervening universe in general also subtly changes the observed large-scale structure. The large-scale structure of the universe also looks different if only redshift is used to measure distances to galaxies. For example, galaxies behind a galaxy cluster are attracted to it and fall towards it, and so are blueshifted (compared to how they would be if there were no cluster). On the near side, objects are redshifted. Thus,

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2436-689: The largest known structure in the universe at that time. In November 2013, astronomers discovered the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall , an even bigger structure twice as large as the former. It was defined by the mapping of gamma-ray bursts . In 2021, the American Astronomical Society announced the detection of the Giant Arc ; a crescent-shaped string of galaxies that span 3.3 billion light years in length, located 9.2 billion light years from Earth in

2494-436: The local supercluster , will eventually appear to freeze in time, while emitting progressively redder and fainter light. For instance, objects with the current redshift z from 5 to 10 will only be observable up to an age of 4–6 billion years. In addition, light emitted by objects currently situated beyond a certain comoving distance (currently about 19 gigaparsecs (62 Gly)) will never reach Earth. The universe's size

2552-534: The position of galaxies in three dimensions, which involves combining location information about the galaxies with distance information from redshifts . Two years later, astronomers Roger G. Clowes and Luis E. Campusano discovered the Clowes–Campusano LQG , a large quasar group measuring two billion light-years at its widest point, which was the largest known structure in the universe at the time of its announcement. In April 2003, another large-scale structure

2610-468: The present time; the electromagnetic radiation from these objects has had time to reach the Solar System and Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion . Assuming the universe is isotropic , the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe is a spherical region centered on the observer. Every location in

2668-421: The redshift of photon decoupling as z  =  1 091 .64 ± 0.47 , which implies that the scale factor at the time of photon decoupling would be 1 ⁄ 1092.64 . So if the matter that originally emitted the oldest CMBR photons has a present distance of 46 billion light-years, then the distance would have been only about 42 million light-years at the time of decoupling. The light-travel distance to

2726-563: The spectra of light from quasars , which are interpreted as indicating the existence of huge thin sheets of intergalactic (mostly hydrogen ) gas. These sheets appear to collapse into filaments, which can feed galaxies as they grow where filaments either cross or are dense. An early direct evidence for this cosmic web of gas was the 2019 detection, by astronomers from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research in Japan and Durham University in

2784-414: The speed of light, at rates estimated by Hubble's law . The expansion rate appears to be accelerating , which dark energy was proposed to explain. Assuming dark energy remains constant (an unchanging cosmological constant ) so that the expansion rate of the universe continues to accelerate, there is a "future visibility limit" beyond which objects will never enter the observable universe at any time in

2842-476: The time the light was emitted. For example, the cosmic microwave background radiation that we see right now was emitted at the time of photon decoupling , estimated to have occurred about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, which occurred around 13.8 billion years ago. This radiation was emitted by matter that has, in the intervening time, mostly condensed into galaxies, and those galaxies are now calculated to be about 46 billion light-years from Earth. To estimate

2900-422: The universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth. The word observable in this sense does not refer to the capability of modern technology to detect light or other information from an object, or whether there is anything to be detected. It refers to the physical limit created by the speed of light itself. No signal can travel faster than light, hence there

2958-509: The universe will keep expanding forever, which implies the number of galaxies that can ever be theoretically observed in the infinite future is only larger than the number currently observable by a factor of 2.36 (ignoring redshift effects). In principle, more galaxies will become observable in the future; in practice, an increasing number of galaxies will become extremely redshifted due to ongoing expansion, so much so that they will seem to disappear from view and become invisible. A galaxy at

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3016-537: The universe. It is difficult to test this hypothesis experimentally because different images of a galaxy would show different eras in its history, and consequently might appear quite different. Bielewicz et al. claim to establish a lower bound of 27.9 gigaparsecs (91 billion light-years) on the diameter of the last scattering surface. This value is based on matching-circle analysis of the WMAP 7-year data. This approach has been disputed. The comoving distance from Earth to

3074-403: The universe. The most famous horizon is the particle horizon which sets a limit on the precise distance that can be seen due to the finite age of the universe . Additional horizons are associated with the possible future extent of observations, larger than the particle horizon owing to the expansion of space , an "optical horizon" at the surface of last scattering , and associated horizons with

3132-431: The various wavelength bands of electromagnetic radiation (in particular 21-cm emission ) have yielded much information on the content and character of the universe 's structure. The organization of structure appears to follow a hierarchical model with organization up to the scale of superclusters and filaments . Larger than this (at scales between 30 and 200 megaparsecs), there seems to be no continued structure,

3190-469: Was discovered, the Giant Void , which measures 1.3 billion light-years across. Based on redshift survey data, in 1989 Margaret Geller and John Huchra discovered the " Great Wall ", a sheet of galaxies more than 500 million light-years long and 200 million light-years wide, but only 15 million light-years thick. The existence of this structure escaped notice for so long because it requires locating

3248-486: Was discovered, the Sloan Great Wall . In August 2007, a possible supervoid was detected in the constellation Eridanus . It coincides with the ' CMB cold spot ', a cold region in the microwave sky that is highly improbable under the currently favored cosmological model. This supervoid could cause the cold spot, but to do so it would have to be improbably big, possibly a billion light-years across, almost as big as

3306-450: Was found to have a redshift of 8.2, which indicates that the collapsing star that caused it exploded when the universe was only 630 million years old. The burst happened approximately 13 billion years ago, so a distance of about 13 billion light-years was widely quoted in the media, or sometimes a more precise figure of 13.035 billion light-years. This would be the "light travel distance" (see Distance measures (cosmology) ) rather than

3364-417: Was the first identification of a large-scale structure, and has expanded the information about the known grouping of matter in the universe. In 1987, Robert Brent Tully identified the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex , the galaxy filament in which the Milky Way resides. It is about 1 billion light-years across. That same year, an unusually large region with a much lower than average distribution of galaxies

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