This vast chain of hundreds of galaxies—a cosmic filament—winds its way through space, located 400 million light-years away.
When University of Oxford astronomer Lyla Jung first observed the cosmic arrangement on her screen, she could hardly believe it was genuine. However, it was indeed real, and Jung, along with her colleagues, proceeded to discover one of the largest rotating structures ever identified in the cosmos: a chain of galaxies situated within a spinning cosmic filament, 400 million light-years from our planet.
The discovery, detailed in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, could provide astronomers with fresh perspectives on the formation, evolution, and diversity of galaxies, according to Jung. Galaxies are not distributed randomly or uniformly throughout the universe; rather, they are interconnected in structures known as filaments, which link them, along with dark matter, across the expanse of space. In conjunction with voids—regions that contain minimal matter—and clusters comprising hundreds of thousands of galaxies, filaments constitute what astronomers refer to as the cosmic web.
