A University of Hawaiʻi led discovery of an immense bubble 820 million light years from Earth is believed to be a fossil like remnant of the birth of the universe.
Article continues below
r>
Astronomer Brent Tully from the UH Institute for Astronomy and his team unexpectedly found the bubble within a web of galaxies. The entity has been given the name Hoʻoleilana, a term drawn from the Kumulipo, a Hawaiian creation chant evoking the origin of structure.
The new findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal, mention that these massive structures are predicted by the Big Bang theory, as the result of 3D ripples found in the material of the early universe, known as Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO).
"We were not looking for it. It is so huge that it spills to the edges of the sector of the sky that we were analyzing," explained Tully.
"As an enhancement in the density of galaxies it is a much stronger feature than expected. The very large diameter of one billion light years is beyond theoretical expectations. If its formation and evolution are in accordance with theory, this BAO is closer than anticipated, implying a high value for the expansion rate of the universe."
Astronomers located the bubble using data from Cosmicflows-4, which is to date, the largest compilation of precise distances to galaxies.
Tully copublished the exceptional catalog in fall 2022. His team of researchers believe this may be the first time astronomers identified an individual structure associated with a BAO. The discovery could help bolster scientists' knowledge of the effects of galaxy evolution.
Using the Cosmicflows-4 catalog, the researchers were able to see a full spherical shell of galaxies, identify its center, and show that there is a statistical enhancement in the density of galaxies in all directions from that center.
Hoʻoleilana encompasses many well-known structures previously found by astronomers, such as the Harvard/Smithsonian Great Wall containing the Coma Cluster, the Hercules Cluster and the Sloan Great Wall.
The Boötes Supercluster resides at its center. The historic Boötes Void, a massive empty spherical region, lies inside Hoʻoleilana.
Tests with simulations have demonstrated that the shell structure identified as Hoʻoleilana has less than 1% probability of being a statistical accident.
Hoʻoleilana has the properties of a theoretically anticipated baryon acoustic oscillation, including the prominence at its center of a rich supercluster; however, it stands out stronger than expected.
In detail, HoÊ»oleilana is slightly larger than anticipated from the theory of the standard model of cosmology, and what has been found from prior statistical pair-wise studies of galaxy separations. The size is in accord with observations of the local expansion rate of the universe and of galaxy flows on large scales that also hint at subtle problems with the standard model. ■