Astronomy Fun Fact #4
- Moiya McTier
- Apr 18, 2019
- 1 min read
The largest structure in the entire universe is called the BOSS Great Wall, named after the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey that discovered it. It's made up of about 850 galaxies that have all become gravitationally bound to each other in one giant supercluster nearly 1 BILLION light years across. This BOSS sits about 6.5 billion light years away from us, so you probably can't make it there for your summer vacation.
you are really good at explaining this stuff in normal people words
After the universe inflated immediately following the Big Bang, the matter in the universe was experiencing opposing forces. All of the matter was creating a gravitational pull inwards, but the radiation from all of the hot material was pushing outwards. Those opposing forces caused the baryonic matter (all of the matter that isn't dark matter) to wave back and forth, or "oscillate." We call them "acoustic oscillations" because the waves were created by pressure, just like sound waves are.
This was a wild read haha: http://www.sdss3.org/surveys/boss.php What exactly are "baryon acoustic oscillations"?