But even then, given a large universe, why would this be mathematically impossible? If galaxies formed evenly everywhere, couldn't this have happened by coincidence? Which theory is violated here?
Sorry my knowledge is a limited "The great courses Cosmology" course from 2009
A random array of points can form a grid, but if you see a grid somewhere the natural assumption is that it wasn't formed by a random process.
Personally I discount the likes of 111111 and 010101 because I know there are artificial processes which produce those sequences and so I discount them on that basis. Yet if you were training a machine to recognize "random" data you'd need to include one sample of each of the possible 2^6 sequences to train it on representative data.
There is another category of random / not random to be considered: self-similar data, where there is similar data in the same area or at different scales. Taken in total, all sequences in this "universe" may be nonetheless randomly distributed.
A taxonomy / review of sequences which we generate inordinately and what phenomena are affected is missing. Self-similar data always deserves a second look, although the cause can be a natural self-organizing principle (e.g. literal snowflakes).
If random processes can give birth to structure, then one can also argue that maybe this ring is a fluke.
Remember that randomness is not necessarily uniformity
This is also not the only such structure found, some other examples are even larger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cosmic_structu...
Why is that important?
>In general when using an algorithmic approach to identify clusters of points in a distribution, one must employ some criterion in order to decide whether the results obtained correspond to ‘real’ structures in the Universe, or are merely artefacts of the algorithm. One possible criterion is theoretical: if there is a good reason to believe that the points in the cluster are in fact gravitationally bound, for instance, or if its properties match those of structures that are expected to exist in the real Universe, it may be regarded as real. Alternatively, to assess unusual clusters which do not conform to theoretical expectation, the relevant criterion is whether they are unlikely to have arisen purely from noise.
Since the linkage length used to identify the Huge-LQG is so large, there is no reason I know of to believe that it forms a gravitationally bound structure. Certainly no real structures of such size are expected in the standard cosmology. On the other hand, when using this linkage length the clustering algorithm often finds such extended structures even in pure Poisson noise. It therefore appears that the Huge-LQG fails to satisfy either criterion, and so its interpretation as a ‘structure’ is highly questionable. This conclusion is even more applicable to the other slightly smaller quasar groups whose existence has also been claimed.
This is seen as a ring, but likely a coil aligned with our viewpoint.
I don't know much about astronomy, but that fact changed how I played with the idea in my head.
To my mind, the coil structure is the bigger headline, a bit buried in the BBC article.
I’ll try to get and read the AAS paper at the weekend, perhaps that will help me.
Something that has both a linear and an angular momentum or spin while pushing things (galaxies in this case) away?
I’m not a physicist in any way, so I might use terms incorrectly, but I hope the point got across.
This passage/article doesn't make intuitive sense to me here. What in this physical universe is smoothly spread? Only if you average or look at a massive aggregate level, sure. But at each "zoom level" there should be another non-smooth structure, while things at a smaller level smooth out.
It's more or less fractal all the way up and down.
I don't think this challenges our thinking on the cosmos?
That would still be a valuable find, though.
I wonder if there are other structures, but we can’t (easily?) tell because of how they are aligned with Earth.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38963315
In this regard, I agree.
[0] Is it just my imagination (or perhaps someone trolling Wikipedia), or does Zoroastrian eschatology seem a bit suspiciously like the Book of Revelation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism#Eschatology:_Re...
The Simulation hypothesis is a rational extrapolation of possible things. Quite different than religion.
Some other similar ideas that come to mind are the multiverse quartz megaspheres in the second half of Diaspora and the message embedded in pi in Contact, the novel.
These are stories of course, but the cosmic microwave background radiation is a real life megastructure that encodes the remnants of the Big Bang and that is terrifyingly fascinating.
Another real world one is the giant foreboding galaxies in the background of the Angular Diameter Turnaround xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2622/
What other examples, fictional or real, are there of giant monumental pieces of information encoding?
