Newly Found String of Galaxies Provides New Data on Universe

Astronomers in New Mexico say they have identified the biggest known structure in the universe, an enormous string of galaxies that offers tantalizing hints about the origin and possible fate of the universe itself.

The “filament” of galaxies and clusters of galaxies stretches more than 1 billion light years, or about 6 trillion billion miles, according to the astronomers who reported their findings last week to the National Science Foundation.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Jack Burns, associate astronomy professor at the University of New Mexico, said the identification that he and graduate student David Batuski made provides new evidence that there is much more to the universe than the stars and other visible matter.

Condensation, Fragmentation

And it also is a new indication that galaxies such as our own Milky Way were formed through condensation and fragmentation from enormous-size clouds of gas, rather than the other way around, he said.

Without much more than the visible matter, there simply wouldn’t be enough mass, enough gravitational force, to hold such a huge supercluster of galaxies together, he theorized.

Growing evidence of the existence of greater amounts of gravitational force also lends support to theories that the “end of the world” may well come when gravity causes the universe to stop expanding and begin to collapse.

Unanswered Question

“That’s probably the biggest unanswered question in astronomy,” he said: whether the universe will keep expanding or whether “the entire universe in a number of billions of years will begin contracting down into what some people have called a ‘big crunch.’ ”

Although the newly identified filament is the largest yet identified, it isn’t the first. Astronomers using radio telescopes in West Virginia and Puerto Rico identified one about 700 million light years long three years ago, and other smaller ones have also been discovered.