A giant structure hidden in deep space is challenging human understanding of the universe

A giant structure in the distant universe is challenging our understanding of how the universe evolved .

At a distance of 6.9 billion light years from Earth, astronomers have found a giant ring of galaxies, almost perfectly round and about 1.3 billion light years in diameter.

The Great Ring is the name scientists give to this structure. It does not match any structure or formation mechanism known to man.

This discovery, discovered by astronomer Alexia Lopez of the University of Central Lancashire, was presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

This is the second giant structure discovered by Lopez and his colleagues. The first Great Ring, called the Giant Great Ring , is located in the same part of the sky as the 2nd Great Ring.

2 giant structures identified from Earth.

When the first Great Ring discovery was announced in 2021, it left astronomers confused. The presence of the Great Ring only makes the mysteries of the universe deeper.

Both of these giant circular structures are not easily explained according to our current understanding of the universe.

Their enormous size, distinctive shape, and cosmic proximity are surely telling humans about something important. But what exactly is it, scientists still do not dare to confirm.

The most direct connection seems to be with something called the Baryon Acoustic Oscillator (BAO) . These are giant circular galaxies found throughout space.

They are actually spheres, fossils of sound waves that propagated in the early Universe and then froze when space became so diffuse that the sound waves could no longer travel.

Big Round is not BAO . BAOs usually have a fixed size with a diameter of about 1 billion light years. And close examination of the Great Rings reveals that they are shaped like a corkscrew aligned to look like a ring!

Cosmologists calculate the current theoretical size limit of the structures to be 1.2 billion light-years , yet both of these structures are much larger.

But size is only one of the issues. What remains is its significance for the field of research on the evolution of the universe.

One possibility is that these structures are a type of topological defect in the fabric of space-time called cosmic strings.

They are thought to resemble proton-wide wrinkles that appeared in the early Universe when space-time was stretched, then frozen in place. We haven't found much physical evidence for cosmic strings yet, but the theoretical evidence is quite promising.

Currently, no one knows for sure what the Great Rings mean. They could just be random arrangements of galaxies spinning through space, although the chances of that seem pretty small.

The best hope is to find more such galactic arrangements, scattered throughout the universe. Then from there, we can summarize their similarities.