Cosmic Vine: Enormous Structure Hosting 20 Galaxies
An international team of scientists has made a groundbreaking discovery – an enormous structure dubbed ‘Cosmic Vine’, which is home to at least 20 massive galaxies. This structure is about 13 million light-years long and 0.65 million light-years wide, making our galaxy, the Milky Way, seem insignificant in comparison.
Key Highlights
- Enormous structure hosting 20 massive galaxies
- Cosmic Vine spans 13 million light-years in length and 0.65 million light-years in width
- The structure was detected by astronomers led by Shuowen Jin of the Technical University of Denmark
- The universe was only 2.5 billion years old when Cosmic Vine made its appearance
- Cosmic Vine is home to two of the most massive galaxies ever found at such a high redshift
The findings about the Cosmic Vine were published on the pre-print server arXiv and have significant implications for our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.
What makes this discovery truly remarkable is that Cosmic Vine is not a virialized system, but rather on its way to becoming a galaxy cluster. It provides insights into the formation of such clusters and the emergence of massive galaxies within them, marking a crucial step forward in our understanding of the universe.
The international team of researchers also proposes further investigation of quiescent cluster galaxies at high redshifts, which could be instrumental in unraveling the mysteries of how the largest structures in the universe form and evolve.
This groundbreaking discovery opens up a new frontier in our exploration of the cosmos and sheds light on the awe-inspiring complexity of the universe we inhabit.