Our Universe is truly huge. Pulsars, planets, stars, black holes and hundreds of other objects of incomprehensible size that are found in the Universe.
And today we would like to talk about the 10 biggest things. In this list, we've put together a collection of some of the largest objects in space, including nebulae, pulsars, galaxies, planets, stars, and more.
Without further delay, here is a list of the ten biggest things in the universe.
The most big planet in the Universe - this 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.
To date the most a big star is UY Scutum in the constellation Scutum at a distance of about 9,500 light-years from us. This is one of the most bright 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 of 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.
Black holes are not measured in kilometers, 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.
7. 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 with Milky Way IC 1101 is more than 50 times larger and 2000 times more massive.
Lyman-alpha rays (drops, clouds) represent 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 generation 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 assumption of what it might look like up close.
A radio galaxy is a type of galaxy that has much greater radio emission compared to other galaxies.
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. Distance to Earth approximately 1 billion light years
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.
Most large group quasars (a quasar is a bright, energetic galaxy) is 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. Availability of such large groups quasars in the Universe contradict Einstein’s Cosmological Principle, so their research is doubly interesting for scientists.
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.
Ancient pyramids, the world's tallest skyscraper in Dubai almost half a kilometer high, the grandiose Everest - one look 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.
Largest asteroid
By far the most large asteroid In the universe, Ceres is considered: 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 (!) more mass 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.
Largest 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 more 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 of famous 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 greater than radius about 1800-2200 times 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 the Earth's oceans combined contain.
A cloud of gaseous water surrounds a supermassive black hole, which is located 12 billion light-years from Earth. The 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 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 big bang and are true relics of the ancient Universe.
Shapley Supercluster
For many years, scientists have believed that our Milky Way galaxy is being pulled across the Universe towards the constellation Centaurus at a speed of 2.2 million kilometers per hour. Astronomers theorize that this is due to Great Attractor(Great Attractor), an object with such a gravitational force that it is enough to attract entire galaxies to itself. True, to find out what kind of object this is, scientists for a long time They couldn't because 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 lies beyond 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 currently 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 located in it is based not so much on calculation physical location object, how much by 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 centers 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 at the same distance from the Earth. These bursts formed a ring in the sky 70 times the diameter of the full Moon.
Great Wall of Hercules - Northern Crown
Most large object in the Universe was also discovered by astronomers as part of the observation of gamma radiation. 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 incredibly sized structure, 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 threads 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 most bright objects 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 space.”
Thanks to the constant development of technology, astronomers are finding more and more diverse objects in the Universe. The title of “largest object in the Universe” passes from one structure to another almost every year. Here are examples of the largest objects that have been discovered so far.
1. Supervoid
In 2004, astronomers discovered the largest void (the so-called void) in known universe. It is located 3 billion light years from Earth in the southern part of the constellation Eridanus. Despite the name "void," the 1.8 billion light-year-sized void is not actually a completely empty region in space. Its difference from other parts of the Universe is that the density of matter in it is 30 percent less (in other words, in the void less stars and clusters).
Also, the Eridanus Supervoid is notable for the fact that in this region of the Universe the temperature microwave radiation 70 microkelvins less than in the surrounding space (where it is approximately 2.7 kelvins).
2. Space blot
In 2006, a team of astronomers from the University of Toulouse found a mysterious green blob in space, which became the largest structure in the Universe at that time. This blob, called the Lyman Alpha Blob, is a gigantic mass of gas, dust and galaxies that stretches 200 million light years across (that's 7 times the size of our galaxy, the Milky Way). Light from it takes as much as 11.5 billion years to reach Earth. Considering that the age of the Universe is most often estimated at 13.7 billion years, the giant green blob is considered one of the oldest structures in the Universe.
3. Shapley Supercluster
Scientists have long known that our galaxy is moving towards the constellation Centaurus at a speed of 2.2 million kilometers per hour, but the reason for the movement remained a mystery. About 30 years ago, a theory emerged that Milky Way attracts the "Great Attractor" - an object whose gravity is strong enough to attract our galaxy by great distance. As a result, it was discovered that our Milky Way and the entire Local Group of galaxies are attracted to the so-called Shapley Supercluster, consisting of more than 8,000 galaxies total mass 10,000 times larger than the Milky Way.
4. Great Wall CfA2
Like many of the structures on this list, the Great Wall of CfA2 was recognized as the largest known object in the Universe when discovered. The object is located approximately 200 million light-years from Earth, and its approximate dimensions are 500 million light-years long, 300 million wide, and 15 million light-years thick. It is impossible to establish the exact dimensions, since clouds of dust and gas from the Milky Way obscure part of the Great Wall from us.
5. Laniakea
Galaxies are usually grouped into clusters. Those regions where clusters are more densely packed and connected to each other by gravitational forces are called superclusters. It was once believed that the Milky Way, along with Local group galaxies is part of the Virgo Supercluster (110 million light-years across), but new research has shown that our region is just an arm of a much larger supercluster called Laniakea, which measures 520 million light-years across.
6. Sloan's Great Wall
The Great Wall of Sloane was first discovered in 2003. The giant group of galaxies, stretching over 1.4 billion light years, held the title of the largest structure in the Universe until 2013. It is located approximately 1.2 billion light years from Earth.
7. Huge-LQG
Quasars are the nuclei of active galaxies, in the center of which (as modern scientists assume) there is a supermassive black hole, which throws out part of the captured matter in the form of a bright jet of matter, which leads to super-powerful radiation. Currently, the third largest structure in the Universe is the Huge-LQG - a cluster of 73 quasars (and therefore galaxies), located 8.73 billion light years from Earth. Huge-LQG measures 4 billion light years.
8. A giant ring of gamma-ray bursts
Hungarian astronomers have discovered one of the largest structures in the Universe at a distance of 7 billion light years from Earth - a giant ring formed by bursts of gamma radiation. Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest objects in the Universe, releasing as much energy in just a few seconds as the Sun produces in 10 billion years. The diameter of the discovered ring is 5 billion light years.
9. Great Wall of Hercules - Northern Crown
Currently largest structure in the Universe there is a superstructure of galaxies called the “Great Wall of Hercules-Corona Borealis.” Its size is 10 billion, or 10 percent of the diameter of the observable Universe. The structure was discovered through observations of gamma ray bursts in the area of the constellations Hercules and Corona Borealis, a region 10 billion light years away from Earth.
10. Cosmic Web
Scientists believe that the distribution of matter in the Universe is not random. It has been suggested that galaxies are organized into a huge universal structure in the form of thread-like filaments or clusters of "partitions" between huge voids. Geometrically, the structure of the Universe most closely resembles a bubbly mass or a honeycomb. Inside the honeycomb, which is approximately 100 million light years across, there are virtually no stars or any matter. This structure was called the "Cosmic Web".
It may seem incredible, but space discoveries directly affect everyday life of people. Confirmation of this.
Ancient pyramids, the world's tallest skyscraper in Dubai almost half a kilometer high, the grandiose Everest - one look 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.
Largest 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
In the photo: on the left - Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, on the right - TRES4
In the constellation Hercules there is a planet TRES4, the size of which is 70% more sizes Jupiter itself big planet in the Solar System. But the mass of TRES4 is inferior to the mass of Jupiter. This is due to the fact that the planet is very close to the Sun and is formed by gases constantly heated by the Sun - as a result, its density is heavenly body resembles a kind of marshmallow.
Biggest star
In 2013, astronomers discovered KY Cygni, the largest star in the universe to date; The radius of this red supergiant is 1650 times the radius of the Sun.
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 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 Shapley Supercluster is a collection of galaxies spanning over 400 million light years. The Milky Way is approximately 4,000 times smaller than this super galaxy. The Shapley Supercluster is so much larger that the fastest spaceships It would take Earth trillions of years to cross it.
The enormous group of quasars was discovered in January 2013 and is currently considered the largest structure in the entire universe. Huge-LQG is a collection of 73 quasars so large that it would take over 4 billion years to travel from one end to the other at the speed of light. The mass of this grandiose space object is approximately 3 million times greater than the mass of the Milky Way. The Huge-LQG group of quasars is so enormous that its existence refutes Einstein's basic cosmological principle. According to this cosmological position, the universe always looks the same, regardless of where the observer is located.
Not long ago, astronomers managed to discover something absolutely amazing - a cosmic network formed by clusters of galaxies surrounded by dark matter, and resembling a giant three-dimensional spider web. How big is this interstellar network? If the Milky Way galaxy were an ordinary seed, then this cosmic network would be the size of a huge stadium.
