Astronomers have discovered in the constellation of Leo and the adjacent areas of the sky largest structure in the Universe - a collection of 73 quasars, stretching to 1240 million parsecs, or 4 billion light years, according to a paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"Even traveling at the speed of light, you will spend more than 4 billion years when crossing this cluster. This discovery is remarkable not only for its size, but also the fact that it is contrary to the cosmological principle, which was considered a generally accepted truth since Einstein. We try to find a similar education in support to this "challenge", - stated the head of the group of discoverers accumulation Roger Clowes (Roger Clowes) from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK.

Clowes and his colleagues found the biggest today the object in the known Universe, studying the images from a directory DR7QSO received under the digital sky survey SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey).



The authors were interested in quasars nuclei of active galaxies, the center of which is presumed to be a supermassive black hole, "spits" part of the captured matter in the form of a bright jets of matter-jet. During periods of activity, lasting about 10-100 million years, quasars become one of the brightest objects in the Universe. This allows the detection of Galaxies even in the deep past of the Universe, despite the huge distance between the Earth and ancient galaxies.

The group of Close found in the photographs of the constellation of Leo and the adjacent areas of the sky unusually large number of quasars, closely located to each other. Having analyzed the redshift and other parameters of the radiation from the nuclei of galaxies, the scientists concluded that 73 of them are about the same distance from the Earth and are one cluster - Huge-LQG.

According to their calculations, this "family" of quasars, remote from us at a distance of 8,73 billion light years, consists of 73 separate galaxies. It takes a significant part of the sky, stretching for 4 billion, 2 billion and 1.2 billion light years along three axes. The total mass of clusters is more than 3.4 quintillion Solar masses (10 to 18 degrees), which is tens or hundreds of times more weight than other large objects in the Universe.

As noted Clowes and his colleagues, this object should not exist from the point of view of the cosmological principle is one of the fundamental principles of modern astrophysics. In accordance with the cosmological principle, the same laws of physics fair for each arbitrary point in the Universe, so it looks the same time the same regardless of the location and direction of observation.

One consequence of this principle is to limit the maximum size of clusters of galaxies and other lumps of matter, whose maximum range can not exceed 370 million parsecs, or 1.2 billion light years. The accumulation of Huge-LQG exceed this mark even in the narrowest part.

Clowes and his colleagues plan to continue the study of this cluster and to begin search of similar facilities for the final evidence that supermassive clusters of galaxies can still exist. The opening of the same "family" of quasars will allow us to say that the modern conception of the Universe must be revised, conclude the researchers.