Hello there!
Remember me?
As you may have gathered, I haven’t posted for a while. That’s primarily because for the last five weeks, I’ve been preparing for and then actually doing a bunch of exams. Which is always fun.
But I digress. You may have heard about this already, but a team of astronomers has discovered a group of 73 quasars. And while that’s pretty cool, the most amazing thing is that it is 4 billion lightyears across.
Read that again.
4 billion lightyears.
That’s slightly less than 1/20th of the diameter of the universe. Current astrophysical models and theories suggest that no structure can exceed a diameter of 1.2 billion lightyears. And this one does it in spectacular fashion.
Here’s a representation of the cluster:
To give you an idea of how unimaginably vast this cluster is, our milky way wouldn’t even make up one pixel of this cluster.
When I look up in the sky, I’m awestruck by the unimaginable vastness of the universe. Just looking at it now, it’s impossible to imagine that the sky isn’t infinite and has a limit.
So it’s weird, but the discovery of this cluster has two main effects on me. Yes, it does make me feel tiny and insignificant, but what self-respecting universal body doesn’t? But more interestingly, in some ways, it makes the universe seem smaller.
I know, it sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. See, before I read about this structure, the universe was, to all intents and purposes, infinite. There was no way to put a limit on its size, nor could anything hold a candle to it in terms of size. But now, I know that there’s this massive thing that’s actually comparable on a scale to the universe, so it seems as though a limit has been put on the size of the universe. Sure, it’s not a small limit by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not infinity.
I’m not actually sure how to feel about this realization. If I had to put it into words, I’d say that it feels like I’m finally realizing that a childhood dream isn’t true. It’s not an altogether unpleasant feeling, because it’s not like I’m disappointed the universe isn’t infinite, but it does awake a weird conflict in me.
Anyway, that’s all for today. I’ll try and post a little more often from now on.
Later.
Abzonnian Ramblings 