The LARGEST Galaxy In the Universe! | Alcyoneus

 

astronomers have discovered what may be the universe's version of Shrek a giant ogre of a galaxy so large and scary that cosmic

 villagers surely run away at first sight they've even named it Alcyoneus after a greek mythical giant who fought Hercules and whose name literally means mighty ass at 16.3 million light years wide the Alcyoneus galaxy has a diameter 160 times wider than the milky way and four times that of the previous title holder ic1101 welcome to Science Reads in today's article we fly across the cosmos to see the largest radio galaxy ever discovered and how its nature is befuddling astronomers the world over Alcyoneus is a whale of an oddity a giant in a universe of giants just how large is it time to get out your measuring sticks

 because this is gonna get tricky

 that's quite big let's talk about parsecs in the first star wars movie that some blasphemously call a new hope Han Solo boasts that the millennium falcon may the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs but this makes no sense as a parsec is unit of measurement not time either way a parsec measures 3.26 light years and the nearest star to earth besides the sun of course is Proxima Centauri about 1.3 parsecs away but we need to move on to megaparsecs which measure 3.26 million light years our nearest galaxy andromeda is less than 0.9 megaparsecs away so a megaparsec is huge Alcyoneus for perspective is at least 5.04 megaparsecs wide if han solo had understood parsecs or units of distance and not time he would know that this giant radio galaxy measures 400 000 times as wide as his legendary kessel run for even more perspective ic 1101 the previous record holder now relegated to second place is not even two measly megaparsecs wide a runt by comparison picture this the Alcyoneus galaxies roughly 3 billion light years from earth while our friendly neighborhood andromeda galaxy is by comparison a miniscule 2.5 million light years away andromeda is also the furthest object humans can see with the naked eye and when you see it you're witnessing light that has started its journey to your backyard long before modern humans ever existed to see andromeda you must give your eyes quite a while to adjust to the dark sky perhaps an hour and then you should be able to detect a faint and fuzzy patch of light in the constellation pegasus ah there it is andromeda however if the radio signals we received from alcianeus were light instead it would be as large as the moon in our night sky and 3 billion light years away as the researchers note astronomical pictures are taken from a single viewpoint earth and therefore don't contain depth as a result scientists can only measure a part of the radial galaxy length a low estimate of the total length but even that lower bound is comparable to 100 milky ways in a row so yes our cosmic shrek is mind-bogglingly huge lofar or the low frequency array is a network of around twenty thousand radio antennas in europe that together create the world's largest radio telescope laden university phd student martine oe and his phd supervisors were studying the distribution of cosmic web material filaments when they stumbled across a spectacular discovery they called a stroke of luck and it was hiding in plain sight in the lynx constellation this stroke of luck has already disproved some long-held ideas about limits to growth of radio galaxies and very likely will shed light on mechanisms that drive radio galaxy growth but before these it first set in motion a massive international search by astronomers in the netherlands uk and france to collect the radio light from this discovery why radio light and not light most if not all large galaxies have supermassive black holes in their centers and matters pulled into these monsters in a pattern not entirely different from the water in your bathroom water does not simply pour straight down a drain but as it gets closer its angular velocity increases and it swirls the earth's rotation influences water with the coriolis effect at least slightly though in reality physicists say the swirling is more of an accidental twist caused by the irregularities in the starting flow either way when matters dragged into a black hole's event horizon that lovely point of no return when you need not worry about what you're going to wear tomorrow it circles like that water in your sink and some of it is violently ejected once matter crosses the event horizon it's lights out but before that point the black hole shoots astrophysical jets in opposite directions from the galactic center or active galactic nuclei traveling at almost the speed of light the material heats and dissolves into plasma which then emits radio light and this radio light is detectable by lofar scientists were then able to reprocess a set of already existing images in a way that subtle patterns were suddenly obvious and there it was that's how this ridiculously large but dim alcianeous galaxy was found despite alciania's mind-boggling distance from earth the giant looms as large as

 the moon in the sky an indication the

 structure has to have a record length

 the fact that the radio eyes of the

 lofar telescope only saw the giant

 just now is because the plumes are relatively faint by reprocessing a set of existing images in such a way that subtle patterns stood out the scientists were suddenly able to spot the giant a giant hiding in otherwise plain sight right in the middle of our sky like finding a gigantic but invisible needle in a haystack our own milky way has at least one plume streaming from near its center outwards since we're residents here and as of yet have not left the galaxy for a better vantage point to see such things they are notably difficult to detect alcianeus is simply the largest known structure in the universe of galactic origin how this interstellar ogre grew so ridiculously large is a mystery astronomers are trying to decipher despite initial suspicions that alcianea's supermassive black hole must be unusually large even for something called supermassive data from lofar indicates it's relatively normal compared to other radio galaxies if not small meaning if all it took was a black hole of the size of the one in alcianeus to produce a comparably enormous radial galaxy there would be an incredible number of them and there aren't so out of a galaxy of quite limited density what's causing these tremendous sin baffling plumes clearly as oa notes there are incredible and thus far unknown processes at work in alcianeus galaxies are not just peaceful collections of stars and dust but many feature violent spectacular processes like glowing jet streams and plumes that reach far out into the depths of space many millions of light years or hundreds of times their size astronomers believe that alcianeus may offer new clues as they continue to unravel the structure of the universe particularly about the cosmic web this is the incredibly complex and gargantuan scaffolding network of invisible gas and dark matter woven through the cosmos some believe these colossal filaments are the reason just about everything in the universe spins have you ever wondered about that the plumes of alcianeus are so large so rarefied that chances are high they'll be used to learn more about the cosmic web that's so hard to see but connects the universe if only we could visit and see our cosmic shrek up close and while it would be a difficult trip to make berlin has a sculpture of the mythological giant at its famous pergamon museum Alcyoneus that is not shrek so what do you think about having a new champion of the universe for galactic structures does Alcyoneus hold promise for exciting new discoveries about the enchanting but elusive cosmic web please tell us in the comments