The diameter of the collection of several hundred galaxies and the “umbilical cord” of visible and dark matter binding them together spans 49 million light-years.
MOSCOW, December 4. /TASS/. Scientists have found in the constellations Leo, Hydra, and Sextans the largest spinning structure in the Universe so far—a gathering of several hundred galaxies and the binding “umbilical cord” of visible and dark matter, whose diameter reaches 49 million light-years. This was reported by the press service of the British University of Oxford.
“This structure is particularly intriguing not only because of its enormous dimensions but also because of the unusual combination of axes and rotation directions of the objects that compose it. It can be likened to the ‘teacup’ ride at an amusement park. Each galaxy acts as a spinning teacup, situated within a larger structure moving around its own axis,” explained researcher Jeong So-young from the University of Oxford (UK), as quoted by the university’s press service.
As Jeong So-young and the scientists explain, cosmologists hypothesize that the Universe resembles a giant three-dimensional web in its structure. Its strands, known as filaments, are formed by clusters of dark matter. At the intersection points of these strands, dense clumps of visible matter are concentrated in the form of galaxies and their groupings. Astronomers hope that observations of the nodes in this web will help unravel the mechanisms of galaxy growth, as well as the formation of the entire structure of the cosmos.
In particular, astronomers have long been interested in how visible matter gradually accumulates in the strands of the “cosmic web,” and how the process of its concentration in these cosmic regions affects the structure of galaxies. To obtain such data, scientists examined one segment of the “web,” situated in the constellations Leo, Hydra, and Sextans at a distance of 430 million light-years from Earth, using the South African radio telescope MeerKAT.
The scientists’ attention was drawn to one segment of the web, 117,000 light-years wide, within which lay 14 galaxies stretched in a line spanning 5.5 million light-years. When the scientists measured their rotation speed and direction, they discovered that the galaxies located on different sides of this “umbilical cord” possessed similar rotation axes and, moreover, moved at approximately the same speed but in opposite directions. This indicates that the entire structure is rotating around its axis.
This finding prompted astronomers to investigate several hundred other galaxies located in adjacent portions of the same “cosmic web” filament, where researchers identified similar variances in galaxy rotation speeds. This suggests that the entire “cosmic web” filament, which is 49 million light-years long, is rotating around its axis, making it the largest spinning object yet found in the surveyed Universe. This rotation significantly impacts galaxy formation and the inflow of new matter into them, which must be considered in theoretical calculations, the astronomers concluded.
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