Ancient pyramids, the world's tallest skyscraper in Dubai almost half a kilometer high, the grandiose Everest - just looking at these huge objects will take your breath away. And at the same time, compared to some objects in the universe, they differ in microscopic size.
Most large asteroid
Today, Ceres is considered the largest asteroid in the universe: its mass is almost a third of the entire mass of the asteroid belt, and its diameter is over 1000 kilometers. The asteroid is so large that it is sometimes called a "dwarf planet."
The largest planet
The largest planet in the Universe is TrES-4. It was discovered in 2006 and is located in the constellation Hercules. The planet, called TrES-4, orbits a star that is about 1,400 light-years away from planet Earth.
The planet TrES-4 itself is a ball that consists primarily of hydrogen. Its dimensions are 20 times greater than the size of the Earth. Researchers claim that the diameter of the discovered planet is almost 2 times (more precisely 1.7) larger than the diameter of Jupiter (this is the largest planet in the solar system). The temperature of TrES-4 is about 1260 degrees Celsius.
The largest black hole
In terms of area, black holes are not that big. However, given their mass, these objects are the largest in the universe. And the largest black hole in space is a quasar, whose mass is 17 billion times (!) greater than the mass of the Sun. This is a huge black hole at the very center of the galaxy NGC 1277, an object that is larger than the entire solar system - its mass is 14% of the total mass of the entire galaxy.
The most big galaxy
The so-called “super galaxies” are several galaxies merged together and located in galactic “clusters”, clusters of galaxies. The largest of these “super galaxies” is IC1101, which is 60 times larger than the galaxy where our Solar System is located. The extent of IC1101 is 6 million light years. For comparison, the length of the Milky Way is only 100 thousand light years.
The largest star in the Universe
VY Canis Major- the largest known star and one of the brightest stars in the sky. This is a red hypergiant, which is located in the constellation Canis Major. The radius of this star is approximately 1800-2200 times greater than the radius of our Sun, its diameter is approximately 3 billion kilometers.
Huge deposits of water
Astronomers have discovered the largest and most massive reserves of water ever found in the Universe. The giant cloud, which is about 12 billion years old, contains 140 trillion times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined.
A cloud of gaseous water surrounds a supermassive black hole, which is located 12 billion light years from Earth. This discovery shows that water has dominated the universe for almost all of its existence, the researchers said.
Largest galaxy cluster
El Gordo is located more than 7 billion light years from Earth, so what we see today is just its early stages. According to researchers who have studied this galaxy cluster, it is the largest, hottest and emits more radiation than any other known cluster at the same distance or further away.
The central galaxy at the center of El Gordo is incredibly bright and has an unusual blue glow. The study authors suggest that this extreme galaxy is the result of a collision and merger of two galaxies.
By using space telescope Spitzer and optical imaging scientists estimate that 1 percent of the cluster's total mass is stars, and the rest is hot gas that fills outer space between the stars. This ratio of stars to gas is similar to that in other massive clusters.
Supervoid
Just recently, scientists discovered the largest cold spot in the Universe (at least known science Universe). It is located in the southern part of the constellation Eridanus. With a length of 1.8 billion light years, this spot baffles scientists because they could not even imagine that such an object could actually exist.
Despite the presence of the word “void” in the name (from English “void” means “emptiness”), the space here is not completely empty. This region of space contains about 30 percent fewer galaxy clusters than the surrounding space. According to scientists, voids make up up to 50 percent of the volume of the Universe, and this percentage, in their opinion, will continue to grow due to super-strong gravity, which attracts all the matter surrounding them. What makes this void interesting are two things: its incredible size and its relationship to the mysterious WMAP cold spot.
Superblob
In 2006, the discovery of a mysterious cosmic “bubble” (or blob, as scientists usually call them) received the title of the largest object in the Universe. True, he did not retain this title for long. This bubble, 200 million light years across, is a giant collection of gas, dust and galaxies.
Each of the three “tentacles” of this bubble contains galaxies that are four times more densely packed together than is normal in the Universe. The cluster of galaxies and balls of gas inside this bubble are called Liman-Alpha bubbles. These objects are believed to have formed approximately 2 billion years after the Big Bang and are true relics of the ancient Universe.
Shapley Supercluster
For many years, scientists have believed that our galaxy Milky Way At a speed of 2.2 million kilometers per hour, it is attracted through the Universe to the constellation Centaurus. Astronomers theorize that the reason for this is the Great Attractor, an object with such a gravitational force that it is enough to attract entire galaxies to itself. However, for a long time scientists could not find out what kind of object this was, since this object is located beyond the so-called “zone of avoidance” (ZOA), a region of the sky near the plane of the Milky Way, where the absorption of light by interstellar dust is so great that it is impossible to see what is behind it.
Once scientists decided to look deeper into space, they soon discovered that the “great cosmic magnet” was a much larger object than previously thought. This object is the Shapley supercluster.
The Shapley supercluster is a supermassive cluster of galaxies. It is so huge and has such a powerful attraction that our own galaxy. The supercluster consists of more than 8,000 galaxies with a mass of more than 10 million Suns. Every galaxy in our region of space in present moment is attracted by this supercluster.
Laniakea Supercluster
Galaxies are usually grouped together. These groups are called clusters. Regions of space where these clusters are more densely located among themselves are called superclusters. Previously, astronomers had mapped these objects by identifying them physical location in the Universe, but was recently invented new way mapping of local space, which shed light on data previously unknown to astronomy.
The new principle of mapping local space and the galaxies in it is based not so much on calculating the physical location of an object, but on measuring the gravitational influence it exerts.
The first results of studying our local galaxies using a new research method have already been obtained. Scientists, based on the boundaries of the gravitational flow, note a new supercluster. The importance of this research is that it will allow us to better understand where our place is in the Universe. Previously it was believed that the Milky Way is located inside the Virgo supercluster, however new method research shows that this region is only an arm of the even larger Laniakea supercluster - one of the largest objects in the Universe. It extends over 520 million light years, and somewhere within it we are.
Great Wall Sloan
The Sloan Great Wall was first discovered in 2003 as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a scientific mapping of hundreds of millions of galaxies to determine the presence of the largest objects in the Universe. Sloan's Great Wall is a giant galactic filament, consisting of several superclusters spread across the Universe like the tentacles of a giant octopus. With a length of 1.4 billion light years, the "wall" was once considered the largest object in the Universe.
The Great Wall of Sloan itself is not as studied as the superclusters that lie within it. Some of these superclusters are interesting in their own right and deserve special mention. One, for example, has a core of galaxies that together from the outside look like giant tendrils. Another supercluster has very high level interaction of galaxies, many of which are now undergoing a period of merger.
Huge-LQG7 Quasar Group
Quasars are high-energy astronomical objects located at the center of galaxies. It is believed that the center of quasars are supermassive black holes that pull surrounding matter towards themselves. This results in enormous radiation, 1000 times more powerful than all the stars within the galaxy. Currently, the third largest object in the Universe is the Huge-LQG group of quasars, consisting of 73 quasars scattered over more than 4 billion light years. Scientists believe that this massive group of quasars, as well as similar ones, are one of the main predecessors and sources of the largest objects in the Universe, such as, for example, the Great Wall of Sloan.
Giant gamma ring
Stretching over 5 billion light years, the Giant GRB Ring is the second largest object in the Universe. In addition to its incredible size, this object attracts attention due to its unusual shape. Astronomers studying gamma-ray bursts (huge bursts of energy that result from the death of massive stars) discovered a series of nine bursts, the sources of which were the same distance from Earth. These bursts formed a ring in the sky 70 times the diameter of the full Moon.
Great Wall of Hercules - Northern Crown
The largest object in the Universe was also discovered by astronomers while observing gamma rays. This object, called the Great Wall of Hercules - Corona Borealis, extends over 10 billion light years, making it twice the size of the Giant Gamma-ray Ring. Since the brightest gamma ray bursts produce more big stars, typically located in regions of space that contain more matter, astronomers metaphorically view each burst as a needle prick into something larger. When scientists discovered that a region of space in the direction of the constellations Hercules and Corona Borealis was experiencing excessive bursts of gamma rays, they determined that there was an astronomical object there, most likely a dense concentration of galaxy clusters and other matter.
Cosmic web
Scientists believe that the expansion of the Universe does not occur randomly. There are theories according to which all the galaxies of space are organized into one structure of incredible size, reminiscent of thread-like connections that unite dense regions with each other. These threads are scattered between less dense voids. Scientists call this structure the Cosmic Web.
According to scientists, the web was formed at very early stages of the history of the Universe. Early stage The formation of the web was unstable and heterogeneous, which subsequently helped the formation of everything that now exists in the Universe. It is believed that the “threads” of this web played a large role in the evolution of the Universe, thanks to which this evolution accelerated. Galaxies located inside these filaments have significantly more high rate star formation. In addition, these filaments are a kind of bridge for gravitational interaction between galaxies. After their formation in these filaments, galaxies move towards galaxy clusters, where they eventually die over time.
Only recently have scientists begun to understand what this Cosmic Web actually is. Moreover, they even discovered its presence in the radiation of the distant quasar they studied. Quasars are known to be the brightest objects in the Universe. The light from one of them went straight to one of the filaments, which heated the gases in it and made them glow. Based on these observations, scientists drew threads between other galaxies, thereby creating a picture of the “skeleton of the cosmos.”
When determining whether a thing is large or small, we are guided mainly by comparing it with another thing. Everyone can determine for themselves the largest object on earth. But any of the things you named will certainly be smaller than other objects that can be found in the Universe. What are the biggest things in the Universe?
Enjoy watching and have a wonderful mood!
So, let's go.
Largest asteroid
The most massive asteroid currently known is Ceres. It weighs almost a third of the mass of the entire asteroid belt, and its diameter is about 950 km. Due to its impressive size, it was previously believed that Ceres is a dwarf planet. Many astrobiologists believe that beneath the asteroid's icy surface there may be an ocean that could harbor life.
The largest planet
The largest of the planets is located in the constellation Scorpio and is called WASP-17b (Jupiter on the left, WASP-17b on the right). It is located at a distance of about 1304 light years from us. Its diameter is 50% greater than that of Jupiter, but its mass is only 50% that of Jupiter. In addition to being the largest, WASP-17b also has the lowest density of the known planets: 13 times less than Jupiter and more than 6 times less than Saturn, which is the least dense in our planet. solar system.
The biggest star
By far the largest star is UY Scuti in the constellation Scutum, about 9,500 light-years away. This is one of the brightest stars - it is 340 thousand times brighter than our Sun. Its diameter is 2.4 billion km, which is 1700 times larger than our star, with a weight only 30 times the mass of the sun. It’s a pity that it is constantly losing mass; it is also called the fastest burning star. This may be why some scientists consider NML Cygnus the largest star, and others consider VY Canis Majoris.
The largest black hole
Black holes are not measured in kilometers; the key indicator is their mass. The largest black hole is in the galaxy NGC 1277, which is not the largest. However, the hole in the galaxy NGC 1277 has 17 billion solar masses, which is 17% of the total mass of the galaxy. By comparison, our Milky Way's black hole has a mass of 0.1% of the galaxy's total mass.
Largest galaxy
The mega-monster among the currently known galaxies is IC1101. The distance to Earth is about 1 billion light years. Its diameter is about 6 million light years and holds about 100 trillion. stars; for comparison, the diameter of the Milky Way is 100 thousand light years. Compared to Milky Way IC 1101 is more than 50 times larger and 2000 times more massive.
The largest Lyman-α blob (LAB)
Lyman-alpha blots (drops, clouds) are amorphous bodies resembling amoebas or jellyfish in shape, consisting of a huge concentration of hydrogen. These blots are the initial and very short stage of the birth of a new galaxy. The largest of them, LAB-1, is more than 200 million light years wide and is located in the constellation Aquarius.
In the photo on the left, LAB-1 is recorded by instruments, on the right is an idea of what it might look like up close.
The largest void
Galaxies, as a rule, are located in clusters (clusters), which have a gravitational connection and expand with space and time. What is located in those places where there are no galaxies? Nothing! Regions of the Universe in which there is only “nothing” and is emptiness. The largest of them is the emptiness of Bootes. It is located in close proximity to the constellation Bootes and has a diameter of about 250 million light years. The distance to Earth is approximately 1 billion light years.
Giant cluster
The largest supercluster of galaxies is the Shapley supercluster. Shapley is located in the constellation Centaurus and appears as a bright clump in the distribution of galaxies. This is the largest array of objects connected by gravity. Its length is 650 million light years.
The largest group of quasars
The largest group of quasars (a quasar is a bright, energetic galaxy) is the Huge-LQG, also called U1.27. This structure consists of 73 quasars and has a diameter of 4 billion light years. However, the Great GRB Wall, which has a diameter of 10 billion light years, also claims primacy - the number of quasars is unknown. The presence of such large groups of quasars in the Universe contradicts Einstein’s Cosmological Principle, so their research is doubly interesting for scientists.
Cosmic Web
If astronomers have disputes about other objects in the Universe, then in this case almost all of them are unanimous in the opinion that the largest object in the Universe is the Cosmic Web. Endless clusters of galaxies surrounded by black matter form “nodes” and, with the help of gases, “threads”, which in appearance are very reminiscent of a three-dimensional web. Scientists believe that the cosmic web entangles the entire Universe and connects all objects in space.
I think everyone knows that stars don't fall - they're just meteors that burn up as they enter the atmosphere. But what many people don’t know is that really falling stars also exist, and they are called moving stars. These are large balls of hot gas rushing through space at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour.
When a binary star system is consumed by a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, one of the two partners is swallowed and the other is thrown away at high speed. Imagine how a huge ball of gas, four times the size of our Sun, rushes at tremendous speed!
Hell planet
Gliese 581 is simply "hell from hell". Seriously. The planet with all its nature strives to kill you. But despite this, scientists have determined that this hell may be the most likely candidate for future colonization. The planet orbits a red dwarf, many times smaller than our Sun, whose luminosity is only 1.3% of our star. The planet is much closer to its star than we are to ours. Because of this, it is in a tidally locked state, with one side of the planet always facing the star and the other facing out into space. Like our Moon.
Tidal locking has led to interesting features. If you come out on the side of the planet facing the sun, you will probably melt like a snowman. On the other side of the planet, you will definitely freeze instantly. However, it is theoretically possible to live in the “twilight zone” between the two extremes.
Life on Gliese 581, if there is one there, has its challenges. The planet orbits a red dwarf, which means the planet has a red sky due to the lower frequencies of the visible spectrum. Pure hell. Photosynthetic elements will have to get used to the constant bombardment of infrared radiation, which will turn them deep black. No salad would look appetizing on such a planet.
Castor system
If one or even two suns is not enough for you, look at the Castor system. As one of the two brightest points in the constellation Gemini in our night sky, this system is still brighter than its companion. The fact is that the Castor system is not one, not two, but all six stars revolving around a common center of mass. Three binary star systems revolve around each other - two hot and bright stars type A and four M-type red dwarfs. Together, these six stars produce 52.4 times more luminosity than our Sun.
Space raspberry and space rum
Some recent years Scientists have been studying the dust cloud at the center of our Milky Way. This dust cloud, called Sagittarius B2, smells like rum and tastes like raspberries! The gas cloud consists largely of ethyl formate, which gives raspberries its flavor and rum its distinctive smell. The giant cloud contains billions, billions, and billions more of this substance (and it would be wonderful if it were not saturated with particles of propyl cyanide). The creation and distribution of these complex molecules remains a mystery to scientists, so the intergalactic restaurant will remain closed for now.
Planet of Scorching Ice
Remember Gliese? This hellish place we visited earlier? Let's return to the same solar system. As if one killer planet wasn't enough. Gliese supports a planet made almost entirely of ice - with a temperature of 439 degrees Celsius. The only reason this ice remains solid is the gigantic amount of water present on the planet. Gravity pulls it all towards the core, compressing the water molecules so tightly that they cannot evaporate.
Diamond Planet
This planet will decorate the neck of any girl, and maybe even some Bill Gates. 55 Cancri E - made entirely of crystalline diamond - would cost $26.9 nonillion dollars. Probably even the Sultan of Brunei dreams of one like this at night.
The giant diamond planet was once part of a binary star system until its partner began devouring it. However, the star was unable to take its carbon core with it, and the carbon simply turned into diamond under the influence of high temperature and gigantic pressure - with a surface temperature of 1648 degrees Celsius, conditions were almost ideal.
A third of the planet's mass is pure diamond. While Earth is covered in water and abundant in oxygen, this planet is made up of graphite, diamond and several silicates. Huge gem doubled more than Earth and eight times heavier, which qualifies it as a “super-Earth.”
Cloud Himiko
If there is an object somewhere that can show us the origins of a primordial galaxy, this is it. The Himiko Cloud is the most massive object yet discovered in the early Universe, and dates back to just 800 million years after the Big Bang. The Himiko Cloud amazes scientists with its gigantic size (only half the size of the Milky Way).
Himiko belongs to the so-called reionization era, or the period from 200 million to one billion years after the Big Bang - and is the first glimpse of early galaxy formation that scientists have been able to observe. It was previously assumed that the Himiko cloud could be one large galaxy with a mass of about 40 billion solar, however, according to the latest data, the Himiko cloud may contain three galaxies at once, and relatively young ones.
Largest water reservoir in the Universe
Twelve billion light years away, at the heart of a quasar, lies the largest reservoir of water in the Universe. It contains approximately 140 trillion times more water than Earth's oceans. The water, unfortunately, takes the form of a massive cloud of gas several hundred light years in diameter. It is located next to the colossal black hole at the heart of the quasar, and the hole, in turn, is two hundred billion times larger than our Sun and at the same time constantly spewing out energy equivalent to that of 1000 trillion Suns! This is to give you an idea of the scale of the local brew.
The strongest electric current in the Universe
Just a couple of years ago, scientists stumbled upon electric current cosmic scale: 10^18 amps, or approximately one trillion lightning bolts. Lightning is believed to originate from a huge black hole at the center of the galaxy, which is believed to contain a "powerful cosmic jet" at its core. Apparently, the black hole's powerful magnetic field allows it to launch these lightning bolts through dust and gas over 150,000 light-years away. And if you think that our galaxy is large, one such lightning bolt is one and a half times its size.
The universe is something that our minds cannot comprehend. Some scientists call the entire Universe material world, surrounding us. The human mind is simply not able to understand and analyze its true dimensions.
Nobody knows whether the Universe is finite or not, but it is scientifically proven that it is constantly expanding. This place brings together amazing objects such as nebulae, galaxies, quasars, star clusters, black holes, quasars. Let's talk about the largest objects in the Universe.
The largest asteroid in the Universe
The largest asteroid is called Vesta, and it is recognized as the brightest visible asteroid that can be seen in the starry sky even without a telescope or spotting scope. The dimensions of the asteroid are 578x560x478 kilometers. It has a slightly elongated asymmetrical shape and can even be classified as a dwarf planet such as Mercury. The asteroid is located in the belt between Jupiter and Mars. Discovered celestial body was in 2010 using the Dawn apparatus. It is worth saying that the asteroid does not pose a threat to the Earth due to the high gravity acting on it from Jupiter.
The largest planet
The championship of the largest planet in the solar system is held by Jupiter, which contains hundreds of planets such as the earth. But in the depths of the visible Universe, a real monster lurks.
If we talk about exoplanets that could hypothetically harbor life, one of the largest planets in the Universe is Gliese 581, which was discovered in 2007 at a distance of 20 thousand light years from the earth at the Chilean La Silla Observatory using Doppler shift.
Biggest star
Interesting:
Are there stars that do not shine at all in the visible range?
The largest black hole
The largest supermassive black hole in the visible Universe was discovered in the constellation Perseus at a distance of 228 light years from Earth. This black hole is located in the galaxy: NGC 1277. This black hole contains a simply gigantic amount of matter, which is approximately twelve billion times the mass of our Sun.
It turned out that this black hole weighs about 15 percent of the mass of the entire galaxy, although black holes usually weigh no more than one and a half percent. By the way, such a small black hole is also located in the center of our Milky Way. Scientists agree that a galaxy in which there is a supermassive hole is very strange, since the nature of the formation of such an object is incomprehensible to physicists.
Largest galaxy
The largest galaxy in the Universe is called IC 1101. It is a large supergiant that is located in the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster. The galaxy is located at a distance of one billion light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. It is a CD class galaxy with a diameter of 7 million light years. The object is considered the largest among the known galaxies that have been discovered throughout cosmological research.
The galaxy IC 1101 contains more than one hundred trillion stars. If this galaxy were located in the place of the Milky Way, then it would absorb not only it, but also the Andromeda Nebula, the Triangulum Galaxy, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds.
Interesting:
Why does the sun shine?
Shapley Supercluster
The Shapley Supercluster is a huge cluster of stars that was discovered in 1989. It has a high density of stars. In total, according to preliminary calculations, the Shapley Supercluster contains a concentration of stars more than 500 million light years away. It also contains large galaxies A3560, A3558 and A3559. In total, there are about twenty-five galaxies in the Shapley Supercluster.
The largest pulsar
The largest pulsar, which is a bright pulsating star with a super-dense mass, was discovered in the region of the Tarantula Nebula. It was discovered using a powerful gamma-ray telescope 165 thousand light-years from the Milky Way galaxy. A pulsar was formed after a star exploded, and its core became a powerful neutron star. With a diameter of a couple of kilometers, the pulsar has a mass of twenty solar masses. Its gamma-ray emission is five times higher than that of the famous pulsar from the Crab Nebula. The pulsar rotates at a speed of twenty revolutions per second, emitting powerful gamma radiation.
R136a1 is the most massive star known to date in the Universe. Credit: Joannie Dennis / flickr, CC BY-SA.
Looking at the night sky, you realize that you are just a grain of sand in the endless space of space.
But many of us may also wonder: what is the most massive object known to date in the Universe?
In a sense, the answer to this question depends on what we mean by the word “object.” Astronomers are observing structures such as the Great Wall of Hercules-Corona Borealis - a colossal thread of gas, dust and dark matter containing billions of galaxies. Its length is about 10 billion light years, so this structure can bear the name of the largest object. But it's not that simple. Classifying this cluster as a unique object is problematic because it is difficult to determine exactly where it begins and ends.
In fact, in physics and astrophysics, “object” has a clear definition, said Scott Chapman, an astrophysicist at Dalhousie University in Halifax:
“It is something tied together by its own gravitational forces, for example, a planet, star or stars revolving around a common center of mass.
Using this definition, it becomes a little easier to understand what the most massive object in the Universe is. Moreover, this definition can be applied to different objects depending on the scale in question.
Photo of Jupiter's north pole taken by Pioneer 11 in 1974. Credit: NASA Ames. For our relatively tiny species, planet Earth, with its 6 septillion kilograms, seems huge. But it is not even the largest planet in the solar system. Gas giants: Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter are much larger. The mass of Jupiter, for example, is 1.9 octillion kilograms. Researchers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars, including many that make our gas giants look small. Discovered in 2016, HR2562 b is the most massive exoplanet, approximately 30 times more massive than Jupiter. At this size, astronomers are unsure whether it should be considered a planet or classified as a dwarf star.
In this case, stars can grow to enormous sizes. The most massive known star is R136a1, its mass is between 265 and 315 times the mass of our Sun (2 nonillion kilograms). Located 130,000 light-years from the Large Magellanic Cloud, our satellite galaxy, this star is so bright that the light it emits actually tears it apart. According to a 2010 study electromagnetic radiation, emanating from the star is so powerful that it can remove material from its surface, causing the star to lose about 16 Earth masses every year. Astronomers don't know exactly how such a star could form or how long it will exist.
Huge stars located in the stellar nursery RMC 136a, located in the Tarantula Nebula, in one of our neighboring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 165,000 light-years away. Credit: ESO/VLT. The next massive objects are galaxies. Our own Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years in diameter and contains approximately 200 billion stars, weighing a total of about 1.7 trillion solar masses. However, the Milky Way cannot compete with the central galaxy of the Phoenix cluster, located 2.2 million light years away and containing about 3 trillion stars. At the center of this galaxy is a supermassive black hole- the largest ever discovered - with an estimated mass of 20 billion Suns. The Phoenix cluster itself is a huge cluster of approximately 1000 galaxies with a total mass of about 2 quadrillion Suns.
But even this cluster can't compete with what is likely the most massive object ever discovered: a galactic protocluster known as SPT2349.
“We hit the jackpot by finding this structure,” said Chapman, leader of the team that discovered the new record holder. “More than 14 very massive individual galaxies located in a space not much larger than our Milky Way.”
An artist's illustration showing 14 galaxies that are in the process of merging and will eventually form the core of a massive galaxy cluster. Credits: NRAO/AUI/NSF; S. Dagnello. This cluster began to form when the Universe was less than one and a half billion years old. The individual galaxies in this cluster will eventually merge into one giant galaxy, the most massive in the Universe. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, Chapman said. Further observations showed that general structure contains about 50 satellite galaxies that will be absorbed by the central galaxy in the future. The previous record holder, known as the El Gordo Cluster, has a mass of 3 quadrillion Suns, but SPT2349 likely outweighs that by at least four to five times.
That such a huge object could have formed when the universe was only 1.4 billion years old surprised astronomers, since computer models had suggested that such large objects would take much longer to form.
Given that humans have only explored a small portion of the sky, it is likely that even more massive objects could be lurking far out in the universe.
