Astronomers discover huge
galactic wall hidden behind Milky Way
Scientists have discovered a
celestial structure made of galaxies more than 1.4 billion light-years long and
600 million light-years deep in the skies over the South Pole.”The South Pole
Wall” as it has been dubbed, is situated along the southern border of the
cosmos (from the perspective of Earth) and consists of thousands of galaxies, hydrogen
gas, dust and dark matter. It's one of the largest known structures in the
universe.
The wall is among a number of
structures that make up the cosmic web, including the Great Wall, the Bootes
Void, the comparably sized Sloan Great Wall and the Hercules Corona-Borealis Great
Wall, the largest known structure at 10 billion light-years wide. That’s about
a tenth of the diameter of the observable universe
The South Pole Wall, however, is
half the distance from the Earth to the Hercules Corona-Borealis Great Wall –
500 million light-years – and was hidden by the brightness of the Milky Way in
an area called the Zone of Avoidance. It was discovered when scientists saw
galaxies in different directions around it were affected by its gravitational
pull.