'Giant arc' stretching 3.3 billion light-years across the cosmos shouldn't exist
https://www.livescience.com/giant-arc-in-space.html
EXCERPTS: A newly discovered crescent of galaxies spanning 3.3 billion light-years is [...] called the Giant Arc, consists of galaxies, galactic clusters, and lots of gas and dust. It is located 9.2 billion light-years away and stretches across roughly a 15th of the observable universe.
[...] But the finding, which will take its place in the list of biggest things in the cosmos, undermines a bedrock expectation about the universe. Astronomers have long adhered to what's known as the cosmological principle, which states that, at the largest scales, matter is more or less evenly distributed throughout space.
The Giant Arc is bigger than other enormous assemblies, such as the Sloan Great Wall and the South Pole Wall, each of which are dwarfed by even larger cosmic features. [...] The fact that such colossal entities have clumped together in particular corners of the cosmos indicates that perhaps material isn’t distributed evenly around the universe.
But the current standard model of the universe is founded on the cosmological principle, Alexia Lopez added. "If we're finding it not to be true, maybe we need to start looking at a different set of theories or rules."
[...] Daniel Pomarède, a cosmographer at Paris-Saclay University in France who co-discovered the South Pole Wall, agreed that the cosmological principle should dictate a theoretical limit to the size of cosmic entities. ... Yet he isn't quite ready to toss out the cosmological principle, which has been used in models of the universe for about a century. "It would be very bold to say that it will be replaced by something else," he said... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.livescience.com/giant-arc-in-space.html
EXCERPTS: A newly discovered crescent of galaxies spanning 3.3 billion light-years is [...] called the Giant Arc, consists of galaxies, galactic clusters, and lots of gas and dust. It is located 9.2 billion light-years away and stretches across roughly a 15th of the observable universe.
[...] But the finding, which will take its place in the list of biggest things in the cosmos, undermines a bedrock expectation about the universe. Astronomers have long adhered to what's known as the cosmological principle, which states that, at the largest scales, matter is more or less evenly distributed throughout space.
The Giant Arc is bigger than other enormous assemblies, such as the Sloan Great Wall and the South Pole Wall, each of which are dwarfed by even larger cosmic features. [...] The fact that such colossal entities have clumped together in particular corners of the cosmos indicates that perhaps material isn’t distributed evenly around the universe.
But the current standard model of the universe is founded on the cosmological principle, Alexia Lopez added. "If we're finding it not to be true, maybe we need to start looking at a different set of theories or rules."
[...] Daniel Pomarède, a cosmographer at Paris-Saclay University in France who co-discovered the South Pole Wall, agreed that the cosmological principle should dictate a theoretical limit to the size of cosmic entities. ... Yet he isn't quite ready to toss out the cosmological principle, which has been used in models of the universe for about a century. "It would be very bold to say that it will be replaced by something else," he said... (MORE - missing details)