Newly discovered 'Big Ring' mega-structure of galaxies breaks our best model of the Universe

More about the "Big Ring", how it was found and why it breaks our best model of the Universe coming in this month's Night Sky News video for January. Subscribe son you don't miss out! #shorts #cosmology #astrophysics

👩🏽‍💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

[AdrianColley]

The great thing about astronomical physics is that the problems we don't understand are enormous in every sense.

[johnkotches]

What a great time to be a scientist, or interested in science.

[mrroboto]

"cannot be explained by our best model of the universe" seems to be a perpetually true statement just with different problems swapped out over time

[ardiankotori]

Dr Becki’s passion for her subject is infectious. Thanks to her, I’m getting increasingly excited about the speed of light too. 🌟👍🌟

[jefflittle]

Also known as the dillema, "Did the big bang blow smoke rings?"

[Cianan-vwlb]

Astrophysicist: things can't be any bigger than this. Universe: hold my beer!

[euansmith]

I like how the illustration for "Isotropic" is the eight pointed Chaos Star. 🤘

[cuisinart]

Don’t forget the bigger arc right next to it, and they seem to be concentric and in the same area, making the combined feature MUCH bigger!

[BlackEpyon]

It's more like a corkscrew, if I understand correctly. We just see it as a ring because we happen to be looking at it dead on. As for these large-scale structures, it just means the initial conditions after the big bang were a bit more lumpy than we thought. I'm not bothered by that.

[groundsfordivorce]

The Universe does what it wants, with whatever it wants, whenever it wants, !!!!😊

[DavidBeddard]

The first thing I thought when I read about this news was: I'm going to need a Dr Becky video!

[finalsix]

The great thing about this is that it's another step forward into better understanding

[TheAwesome]

Perspective of the big picture is mind blowing. I wouldn’t even know where to start as a cosmologist. Defining a study point would be the hardest thing for me personally. Amazing.

[fingerboxes]

I think it makes sense that there'd randomly appear to be what we'd consider order. If you throw a thousand toothpicks on the floor, you'll probably be able to make out the letters A, H, or L in the chaos. Just because we see shapes we think are interesting doesn't mean that there's less chaos.

[jonathankennedy]

You're amazing!!! Can you make a dedicated video discussing many of these large structures?

[flyingdutchman]

The Song, Primordial hypothesis would explain structures like this. What is the “Song, Primordial” you might ask? I’m glad you did; it’s a crockpot hypothesis I concocted, all by myself, for my science fiction novel. Thanks for sharing!

[psychologicalprojectionist]

To be fair the isotropic, homogeneous model was an assumption based on it's simplicity and the lack of conflicting data. It shouldn't be any surprise that the astronomy had surprised us again.

[jeromemanceau]

Yes! I've heard about it and was waiting for you to discuss it! Yayy, it's dr Becky megastructure time!

“Screw the rules, I have big donut!"

[jamielybarger]

Our model is based on very little data, if 1.2 is our best guess and we are seeing reacuring structures at 1.3 seems like it fits our models about as well as you would expect.