3 ms·
Gigantic quasar supercluster challenges cosmological status-quo
- uvdiv 14y agoOpen access: http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6256 http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6256
- jbattle 14y agoWhat are the chances this 'structure' is just the unusual coincidence of a large number of quasars in (relative) proximity? Not unlike a seemingly impossible run of "heads" in a stream of coin flips?
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI'm just guessing, but it's probably more akin to a seemingly impossible run of the coin landing on its edge.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoIf the universe was created by a smooth process, then neighboring locations are not statistically independent. The presence of matter in one location would suppress the creation of matter in nearby locations. The existence of even one exception to smoothness in the entire universe tells us something about the origins. Another kind of fluke is possible, though. IIRC quasars are beamed. It could be that the quasar cluster contains no more active galaxies than normal and they are simply all shining in our direction by chance.