8 ms·
A 1.3B-light-year-across ring of galaxies has confounded astronomers
- sshb 2y agoReminded me of the circles in the sky method that might help studying the topological structure of the universe. https://mphitchman.com/geometry/section8-3.html https://mphitchman.com/geometry/section8-3.html (I think I read about it first in “The shape of space” book)
- boxed 2y agoI mean.. you would expect to see rings sometimes if this is a random noise kind of distribution no?
- sapling-ginger 2y agoSupposedly if you scan the sky long enough, you'd find a copy of Shakespeare's play written in the stars.
- 0xedd 2y agoWhy? It's not random.
- The_Colonel 2y agoThe upper estimate of the number of galaxies in the observable universe is 2 trillion, which is far too few to find Shakespeare written with "galaxy dots".
- jjk166 2y agoThere are an infinite number of ways to ascribe meaning to galaxy dots such that they would write out Shakespeare.
- The_Colonel 2y agoCan you propose one which doesn't use massive lookup tables?
- jjk166 2y agoWriting Shakespeare in English requires a pretty massive look up table - we call it a dictionary.
- The_Colonel 2y agoNo, you don't need a massive dictionary. Remember that the topic of this thread is a circle composed of galaxy "dots". An elongated circle can be the letter O or perhaps zero. You can similarly compose other letters visually using galaxy dots, and that's presumably what the original poster meant when talking about writing out a Shakespeare. If the universe was infinite, this would be a possibility.
- roenxi 2y agoYeah, maybe. Certainly a theory. But that artist impression has 24 dots, so the odds of getting a circle might be the same as getting a well drawn rabbit, or a "lol :)" (pencilling it out 24 dots seems reasonable for a "lol :)"). But the fact we got a circle rather than something funny suggests it is probably a phenomenon that causes circles responsible. Circles are far more common in nature than statistics might suggest. Nature well knows circles.
- mr_mitm 2y agoYes, that is why the scientists did a statistical analysis, otherwise it wouldn't be worthy of publication. From the arXiv paper: > Using the Convex Hull of Member Spheres (CHMS) algorithm, we estimate that the annulus and inner absorbers of the BR have departures from random expectations, at the density of the control field, of up to 5.2σ. 5 sigma is the gold standard at which we can safely exclude the noise explanation.
- Lammy1 2y agoThe artist impression in the article is heavily misleading IMHO. The actual "ring" is much more jagged and looks very similar to all the nearby so called "filaments" they labeled. I'm not sure if it's crossing the threshold from constellation-ism to real astronomy. Download the arXiv paper and see for yourself.
- pwatsonwailes 2y agoStructures yes, but not at this sort of scale. For reasons*, there's a soft limit on the scale that you'd expect structures** to scale to. There's no technical reason why they can't get bigger, it just becomes spectacularly unlikely that you'd ever get one. The fact that we've found two so far means 1. There's probably more we haven't found yet, and thus they're probably*** more common than we'd expect, and 2. There may be some mechanism we don't yet understand which leads to the emergence of astronomical structures at this sort of scale. * Actually quite interesting reasons, but which take a lot of maths to explain that I'm not going in to here. ** In this case, defined as a thing or set of things in a mathematically simple shape - spheres, rings etc. *** Assuming any bit of the universe is roughly like any other bits, and we didn't just happen to fluke on literally the only place where these exist, and there's two.
- fsloth 2y agoCan you give references on the *reasons? Would love to try to do some maths reading in a long while.
- pwatsonwailes 2y agoIf you want to do some research on the subject, you're looking for violations of homogeneity, as implied by the Lambda-CDM model of the universe. The lambda in this case is the cosmological constant. You'll need to read up on that too. The shortest, simplest way I can think to explain it is that we expect the universe to look alike, anywhere we look. Think of it like a biopsy - we assume that anywhere we look should be much like anywhere else, because there's no reason to think any area of the universe has special conditions where physics plays by different rules. That sets up some implications around what we think the universe should look like, at different scales. However, we recently have been running into structures which are bigger than we'd expect. Where we get into the maths is to do with the value of the cosmological constant. We currently think it's positive, because the universe is expanding, and its rate of expansion is accelerating. To look into the maths for this, have a Google around the maths behind the accelerating expansion of the universe.
- moralestapia 2y ago
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- valval 2y agoWait till they find a grouping of galaxies of a phallic shape.
- Towaway69 2y agoThe giant red arc in the image has a certain similarity.
- hprotagonist 2y ago“The Long Man describes what is possibly a collection of three burial mounds, the middle one oblong and the ones to the sides round, quite frankly, in a suggestive arrangement that Nanny Ogg approves of. If geography could talk, this bit of it would be boasting: the whole landscape saying "I've got a great big tonker"”
- denton-scratch 2y ago> 9.2 billion light-years from Earth > cosmological neighbours These structures are more than halfway across the observable Universe. It's ludicrous to claim that they are neighbours.
- kuschku 2y agoThe circle and the arc are cosmological neighbours to one another, not to us. They are close enough to each other.
- denton-scratch 2y agoFair enough; but the article doesn't mention how close together they are. Judging from the diagram, they're separated by an angular distance roughly the same size as the larger structure; so about 3 billion LY.
- kuschku 2y agoIf you've got two structures of size X, with a distance of X between them as well, that's relatively close. That's as if Paris had a second Eiffel tower three blocks away.
- denton-scratch 2y agoYeah, that makes sense if Paris is just 15 blocks across, and the Eiffel Tower is a couple of blocks wide, and there's nothing (observable) outside Paris.
- Gooblebrai 2y agoAnd that doesn't even mean they are really close between them linearly.
- namenotrequired 2y agoThey're saying the Big Ring is a neighbor not of earth, but of the "giant arc of galaxies" which "appears in the same region of sky at the same distance from Earth as the Big Ring".
- incognito124 2y agoStrong Expanse vibes
- ur-whale 2y agoTime to revisit Larry Niven's work I think.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoTry Stephen Baxter, if we're working on these sorts of scales.
- ganzuul 2y agoIf the ring rotated, and black hole density decreases with size (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71eUes30gwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71eUes30gwc), could a rotating Gödel universe exist within our universe? Could a region of space be engineered to allow for a limited form of time travel?
- pwatsonwailes 2y agoNo, is the short answer. What you'd need is space-time rotating, not something physical rotating. If you could make the things rotate because space-time was rotating, not because they were, then yes, but there's no mechanism we know of which could do that.
- ganzuul 2y agoAre you familiar with the equations? I'm not prepared to simply take your word for it. In short, this seems to say the exact opposite of your claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_solution
- pwatsonwailes 2y agoYou're on the wrong thing there. I could be wrong but I think you're outside your field on this one.
- ganzuul 2y agoIt says that spacetime exists as an interaction of gravity alone. This implies that there is no other frame of reference in this type of solution to GR. i.e. without mass there is no time in such a universe. Not a new idea. > I could be wrong but I think you're outside your field on this one. And in contrast what would that make of you?? I'm saying that if there in some point in the future (because we can see it now) is sufficient mass density in the region of space of that big ring, and it is rotating, we tick every box we know of to theoretically allow for an eternal circle. "Engineering" it would mean that someone wanted some type of eternal existence, which is the profound idea at play here. Engineering things without the technology to manufacture it happens all the time. Just because we can't imagine how to build it does not mean we can't calculate if it could exist.
- Brajeshwar 2y agoPlease be un-natural and custom-made.
- Aardwolf 2y agoToo bad a ring is still too easy to get created naturally. If it would have had the shape of a square, or a dogecoin, that'd get really interesting
- Galatians4_16 2y ago< monks, chanting >
- Brajeshwar 2y agoFifth Element!
- Galatians4_16 2y agoAnd Halo…
- barbequeer 2y agocustom made arrangement of galaxies??
- Brajeshwar 2y agoAliens - custom-made. I didn't want to say man-made!
- elorant 2y agoThis can’t be alien-made. That’s 9.2 billion years old. The universe was too young back then to allow life to evolve. Not only that, but for a civilization to reach that kind of technological level it could easily have taken them another billion years.
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- ungamedplayer 2y agoIts a smiley face being drawn in progress.
- breck 2y agohttps://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07591 https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07591
- jen729w 2y agoMy partner, mocking: “they found heaven!”
- p0w3n3d 2y agoRing of galaxies? That's puppeteers traversing the space...
- kevindamm 2y agoA Klemperer rosette of galaxies instead of planets? That would be more impressive than a ringworld.
- davedx 2y agoIt's obviously a Kardashev Type III[1] civilization. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
- iiio8 2y agoIt's not just one galaxy. It's a ring of galaxies.
- wrsh07 2y agoI'm reading Stephen Webb's book (If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY), and he describes how a partial Dyson sphere can turn a star into a spaceship which blew my mind (just cover all but one side, the released energy will push it the other direction). Imagine doing that at the Galactic scale.
- hollerith 2y ago>just cover all but one side, the released energy will push it the other direction What is to stop the star from just crashing into the sphere?
- wrsh07 2y agoIn the book he discusses the shkadov thruster which reflects the energy so the shell would move, too. Obviously if it's not reflective you could absorb the energy and use it as needed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine
- Sharlin 2y agoType IV or V, more like.
- astral_drama 2y agoAdjust some galaxies in the early timeline and changes would appear downstream as if they were always there. For affected lifeforms, these structures (e.g. a smiley face or whathaveyou) would appear upon waking in the present morning to the data, yet when the affected search their memories, the structure would have always been there. Unlikely configurations could be interpreted as communication from beings more advanced than typically imagined, or as cosmic engineering projects, or perhaps more likely, the shape of the universe is just different than previously imagined.
- hoseja 2y agoFairy ring.
- andyjohnson0 2y agoInteresting article. I'm not an astronomer, or any kind of scientist, but I tried perusing the paper anyway. What I expected to find was some indication that the stars in question are aligned on a plane - rather than being varying distances [1] from our pov and only looking like a ring to us. Is this information present and I missed it? My other thought, with all respect to the expertise of the scientists involved, is that when we observe the universe at this massive scale it may be inevitable that structures will just appear out of the data, even with very high statistical significance. I don't know if this is a scientifically defensible position to take though. Again - I'm not a scientist and I don't know what I'm talking about. Just musing, but interested in the opinions of others more informed than me. [1] I'm aware that determining distance over cosmological distances is very difficult
- Sharlin 2y ago> stars Galaxies. And determining the approx relative distance of distant galaxies is in fact easy thanks to cosmological redshift (the z values the article refers to). Anyway, given the number of galaxies in the ring, being at different distances but their projections just happening to form a rough circle would be even more astonishing than the galaxies in fact sharing a causal history due to some unknown early-universe mechanism. The article also mentions that either the circle or the arc in itself could be just a statistical coincidence – as long as we dok’t find more such structures – but the existence of both the circle and the arc, in the same part of the sky, is highly suspicious.
- andyjohnson0 2y agoWoops. Yes, galaxies. Too late to edit. > Anyway, given the number of galaxies in the ring, being at different distances but their projections just happening to form a rough circle would be even more astonishing than the galaxies in fact sharing a causal history due to some unknown early-universe mechanism. I don't understand what you mean by this. Why would it be "more astonishing" than an actual causal connection? Surely astronomers are more interested in causal connections than observational coincidences? To illustrate: the stars making up the constellation of Norma [1] form a rough square when seen from earth, but as their distances from Earth vary greatly this is just an illusion caused by Earth's relative orientation to them. Given the Copernican principle (which I accept is not a physical law) I'm struggling to see why a group of galaxies that form a circle only when seen from "near" earth [2] are actually cosmologically significant. I accept that the ring contains more than four galaxies, and this makes the ring more statistically significant than a square of galaxies. But it still implies a privileged viewpoint in order for it to be actually significant. I still have the gut feeling that this potential significance is more than offset by the enormously greater observational scale. tl/dr: why is this more than just naming a new constellation? (Just to re-iterate: I'm interested in understanding the errors in my mental model - and I'm not trying to poke holes in the work of scientists more qualified them me.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_(constellation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_(constellation) [2] And also, I guess, from a similar point on the other "side" of the ring
- igtztorrero 2y agoPi constant appears again
- willis936 2y agoThe Cosmological Principle has been suspect for a long time. It just adds so little value and costs so much to our understanding of the universe. Best to stick to provable things.
- mr_mitm 2y agoLittle value? It's one of the assumptions that lead us to the prediction of the CMB which we then found. It's proved very fruitful, I'd say. Without the cosmological principle, modern cosmology is a complete non-starter. I'm not aware of any serious theories whatsoever that even attempt to explain anything without the cosmological principle or at least an approximation thereof.
- andrewflnr 2y agoI recall the CMB being found accidentally, and then becoming evidence for the big bang. You don't need cosmological homogeneity to predict the CMB.
- mr_mitm 2y agoYour memory deceives you. The CMB was found accidentally in the sense that its discoverers were simply trying to reduce noise and found this one stubborn source, but it was predicted by Alpher twenty years prior. Can you go into how you would predict it without homogeneity? Without homogeneity you don't get the FLRW metric, so you won't get the big bang or expansion, so no hot dense state in the past, thus no CMB.
- andrewflnr 2y agoWell, I'm not a physicist, but, from Wikipedia: > In a strictly FLRW model, there are no clusters of galaxies or stars, since these are objects much denser than a typical part of the universe. Nonetheless, the FLRW model is used as a first approximation for the evolution of the real, lumpy universe because it is simple to calculate... So unless there's a really strong dependency on the size of the lumps, what breaks on the path from there to something observationally close-enough to the CMB? I mean, I know inflation is a factor there, but that very much postdates the first ideas of the big bang so it can't invalidate the basic idea. Ed: basically what I'm saying is, there are a lot of routes to a CMB-like prediction based on our observations, and I very much doubt they all get broken by lack of a cosmological principle.
- scaglio 2y ago*The Three-Body Problem intensifies*
- Galatians4_16 2y agoOh give me a locus, where the gravitons focus, and the three-body problem is solved… [1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRns6u5bHuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRns6u5bHuw
- moralestapia 2y agoWithin 2 trillion galaxies and 10^24 stars, it would be statistically rare not to find any arrangement following a shape that's familiar to us.
- ojosilva 2y agoI found a enlightening yet brief conference Alexia López gave on the Big Ring discovery: https://youtu.be/fwRJGaIcX6A?t=173 https://youtu.be/fwRJGaIcX6A?t=173 Here's an in-depth seminar on the findings of the Giant Arc in the Sky, her work prior to the Big Ring discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zkGk6EPMC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zkGk6EPMC8 She was also featured in a pop-sci BBC Four documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S36MqEzUzIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S36MqEzUzIw Unfortunately all videos are of quite bad quality, but the explanations are a good introduction to the work.
- venusenvy47 2y agoThat last video, at about 3:55, shows the ring as a bunch of red balls surrounded by a bunch of blue balls. All the balls seem randomly distributed, but a small subset are colored red. I wonder what makes those balls different? There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about their arrangement, other than they chose to color them red.
- gmuslera 2y agoCould we be watching in the wrong direction? Finding patterns where there is random noise is one of our characteristics. Or something closer than distorts our view of that region. In the other hand, complexity sometimes lead to unexpected regularities, maybe things were not so even around the Big Bang.
- throwup238 2y agoDoes anyone know how fast the big ring in the sky keeps on turning?
- barbequeer 2y agoa year or more
- spdustin 2y agoI don't know where I'll be tomorrow, but I understood your reference today.
- lelanthran 2y agoInteresting journey.
- layer8 2y agoThat’s clearly a Cyclops smiley face. Or a weak wifi signal.
- codelikeawolf 2y agoIt's obviously the result of a construction project by a hitherto unknown Type IV civilization on the Kardashev scale. /s
- markus_zhang 2y agoDo we have a guess what does the ring look like X million/billion years ago?
- undersuit 2y agoYes, we have direct observations. /s The light we are viewing now was emitted billions of years ago, we don't know what it looks like today.
- profsummergig 2y agoSomething so key to the news, and yet not mentioned in this article. The ring we see is how it looked 9 billion years ago. The universe is 14 billion years old. So, when the universe was still a baby.
- markus_zhang 2y agoSorry I meant to say...eh...maybe something from a few decades ago so to capture tiny changes.
- qD29Lno-oKXPLEv 2y agoThis is pretty incredible...I honestly would be facinated to find out what sort of early universe event might have precipitated such a massive structure
- Nifty3929 2y agoIs this the center of the universe then? Maybe the big band originated from the center of that ring.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y agoLooks like Galactic Union )
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoIt is a weird structure because it is a helix, and not a ring. Dr. Becky covers these sorts of phenomena in an accessible format: https://www.youtube.com/@DrBecky/videos https://www.youtube.com/@DrBecky/videos
- ThouYS 2y agoI'm not an astronomer either, but pretty sure if I generated uniformly random points on the scale of number of visible galaxys, I could find a circle in there
- dan_mctree 2y agoPretty sure you wouldn't find many circles containing galaxies all at a similar approximate distance There might be some, so it could be lucky and just random chance, but the stats seem to say that it's very unlikely
- moonlion_eth 2y agothat people refuse to accept that it is a structure and not mirage formed by a privileged angle gives homage to its statistical improbability
- riskable 2y agoWild speculation: It's the result of another universe poking into our own, forcing a bunch of galaxies near the center point to spread out in a circular fashion.
- GioM 2y agoMore wild speculation: an expansion point in the previous universe, centred perfectly on a quark-antiquark pair.
- intrasight 2y agoand more: simulation artifact
- bosquefrio 2y agoThis is obviously cosmic graffiti. Damn kids.
- M95D 2y agoLooks like Niven was thinking too small when he imagined Fleet of Worlds being made of just 5 stars.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoNiven walked so that Baxter could run.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoAh, good, we've finally found Boulder's Ring. Weird that it's not in the middle of the Great Attractor, but maybe this was just the Xeelee's prototype.
- mvkel 2y agoRings imply orbit. Could they be orbiting around an insanely-large unseen black hole?