This states that above a certain spatial scale, the universe is homogeneous and looks identical in every direction.
Astronomers have discovered a ring-shaped cosmic megastructure, the proportions of which challenge existing theories of the universe. To subscribe please click tau.id/2iy6f and access our live channel.
The gargantuan or the so-called Big Ring has a diameter of about 1.3bn light years, making it among the largest structures ever observed.
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At more than 9bn light years from Earth, it is too faint to see directly, but its diameter on the night sky would be equivalent to 15 full moons.
The observations were presented on Thursday at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans.
This is significant because the size of the Big Ring appears to defy a fundamental assumption in cosmology called the cosmological principle.
Zooming out on the universe should, in theory, reveal a vast, featureless expanse. Yet the Big Ring is one of a growing list of unexpectedly large structures.
Cosmologists calculate the current theoretical size limit of structures to be 1.2bn light years, but the Big Ring and the Giant Arc, which spans an estimated 3.3bn light years, breach this limit.
Intriguingly, the two structures are at the same distance from Earth, near the constellations of Boötes the Herdsman, raising the possibility that they are part of a connected cosmological system.
These objects are so bright that they can be seen from billions of light years away and act like giant, distant lamps, illuminating intervening galaxies that their light passes en route and which otherwise would go unseen.
