PawPawSimmons
This so called "structure" may not be so much "a structure" as it is a "reflection" within a gravitational wave that is a lot like looking down the inside of a pipe, even looking down the inside of a giant wave on the breaking wave you might be surfing. If you look at the "animated photo" you'll notice a sort of corkscrew type of structure, that thing may very well be the same event being reflected again and again, coming at you in sets "sort of like a mirage happening over and over" on broken gravity fronts. I've seen this kind of thing on other star maps and photos of deep space time and again. I could be wrong but I don't think so.
Peter Clark
What does the Prof mean "1 in 20,000 chance that the ring's arrangement is accidental"? Did something or someone make it? Has he just proved the existence of God?
In any case, how did they calculate that number? It looks way too low!
Nik
"according to Prof Balazs, there's only a 1 in 20,000 chance that the ring's arrangement is accidental."
Does this mean that he considers that it was 'intelligently designed?'
piperTom
"Five billion light years wide" means about 20 billion cubic light years or more than 2 billion cubic LY for each of the nine galaxies. Sounds more like an empty patch of sky rather than a "structure".
For contrast, consider a billion LY diameter sphere right here: It includes Milky Way and Andromeda. It is densely packed with only .08 billion cubic LY per galaxy.
There is something very wrong with this story.
BlueTrombone
Shouldn't that be the 'known' universe?
Elind
Looks more like a Fibonacci spiral than a ring/circle. Of course that would be even more interesting if accurate; but really, what prevents us from saying this is simply coincidental and that there need be no actual physical linkage between them? After all, were we seeing them from a different angle there would be nothing remarkable.
Douglas Bennett Rogers
Distant objects in an expanding universe are magnified because the early universe was smaller. 5B years ago the universe was 40% smaller. Therefore objects at 5B light years should appear 1.6 x as large.
Don Duncan
Nothing in the 'verse is accidental, i.e., "cause and effect" is a universal law. 20,000-1?? When we say an event was accidental, that does not mean it had no cause. The statement is about our knowledge of the event, not the event. It is an epistemological statement, not metaphysical.
B.T.: Everything we know is about, i.e., in reference to, the known universe. That must be, and it's why we don't need to state it. How can we make a statement about an "unknown" universe?
Kristianna Thomas
In 1859, almost 100 years ago, Charles Darwin came out with the Origins of a Species. In the realm of astronomy we have explored scientifically the nature of the universe. We are still groping with how the [this] universe evolved, and continues to evolve over the course of billions of years. We, have made a lot of assumptions about the nature and structure of the [this] universe, and time and time again have had to re-evaluate our preconceived notions. There is much of the universe we don't see, and much of the [this] universe we still don't understand. "According to the team, a structure can not be more than 1.2 billion light years across." The object is 5 x larger than what they assume is possible, and the universe is not symmetrical; the universe is asymmetrical in nature. What! The universe is not made by Kibbler Elves? Is the universe like that of a multi-tentacle octopus, with the galaxies nestled into the tentacles spread out as they cannibalize other galaxies in their regions of space; creating super galaxies as matter consolidates into fewer and fewer galaxies?
RelayerM31
I'm looking forward to the (unfortunately named) James Webb telescope which will "rewrite the book" on astronomy. Astronomers will find that their new discoveries coincide perfectly with a book (the Bible) that needs no rewriting at all.