🔥Quipu, named after the Incan knotted-cord system, is the largest known structure in the universe, spanning approximately 1.3 billion light-years—over 13,000 times the length of the Milky Way.
Discovered through the Cosmic Large-Scale Structure in X-rays (CLASSIX) survey, led by Hans Böhringer of the Max Planck Institute, Quipu is a vast superstructure comprising 68 galaxy clusters, with a mass equivalent to 200 quadrillion suns.
This colossal formation, located 425 to 815 million light-years from Earth, consists of a primary filament with smaller branching strands, resembling the knotted cords of its namesake.
Quipu’s immense size and mass significantly influence its cosmic surroundings. Its gravitational pull affects the cosmic microwave background (CMB), causing fluctuations via the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, and distorts light through gravitational lensing, impacting measurements of the universe’s expansion rate, known as the Hubble constant.
These effects challenge the cosmological principle, which assumes the universe is homogeneous on large scales, prompting reevaluation of current models.
Despite its grandeur, Quipu is transient, expected to fragment into smaller, gravitationally bound units over billions of years due to cosmic expansion driven by dark energy.
Alongside four other superstructures—Shapley, Serpens-Corona Borealis, Hercules, and Sculptor-Pegasus—Quipu accounts for 45% of nearby galaxy clusters, 30% of galaxies, and 25% of matter, occupying 13% of the observable universe’s volume.
Its discovery, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, underscores the need for further study to refine our understanding of galaxy evolution and cosmic structure formation.
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