Largest Object in the Universe Discovered

prostoalex writes "Quick, think of the largest object you can imagine. Whatever your imagination delivered it probably wasn't an 'enormous amoeba-like structure 200 light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas,' a newly found object, as USA Today reports."

The largest?

[slimjim8094]

I have a particaular objection to the title. "The Largest Object" makes it sound like we know we will never find anything bigger. With the size (infinite?) of the universe, I find that impossible to believe. A better alternative title: "Largest object known to date is 100M LY across"

Sorry to bitch and moan, but it pisses me off when people are so damn loose with the english language.

Also: How is this important? So it's big. What now?

Re:The largest?

[Anonymous Coward]

My sentiments exactly...

Calling this an object is a stretch. It's actually a collection of objects close enough together that they might be considered related by proximity. Under this definition, my laptop and I are one object because we are closer together than I am to the tree in the front yard (or the tree, the laptop, and I are the same object because we are closer together than I am to Buckingham Palace).

I guess this is the biggest collection of objects? No wait, that would be the universe... I guess this is the biggest subset of the known universe. Not as thrilling a headline, but hey...

Re:This reminds me

[thebes]

But by the very nature of the supposition that we are part of something larger, that means that the larger thing may not be bound by our own rules.

Re:The largest?

[MindStalker]

Well its all about prespective. From our distance it appears as one object. I'm sure if you asked a molecule if he was part of an object with the next molecule he would disagree. :)

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[B'Trey]

Playing sort of fast and loose with the definition of "object," aren't they? I generally think of an object as a single item, not a collective. If this is an "object," then why isn't the universe itself an object? And if the universe is an object, then it's necessarily larger than this one.

Problem with pseudo-scientists

[MisterSquid]

The problem with pseudoscientists such as yourself is that your thinking is limited by what you know.

So what if the fastest information can travel is the speed of light? If this 200-million-light year-wide amoeba is, say, a small part of the being, problems of entropy and decay may not be relevant. How long will the larger structures of such a being persist? What are the structures of such a being?

Imagine a species of "being" existing on the scale of what we call the quantum. Applying what is knowable about the world of the quantum to the world of the molecular would mean that our macro world could not exist. Such beings would say, "the ravages of quantum mechanics and particle decay and instability would not allow such beings to exist." They would be both right and wrong. The world we normally observe cannot be extrapolated from the world of the subatomic. Lucky for us, our world is an empirical fact.

Concerning the grandparent's ideas which you so cavalierly dismiss according to what you know about your sub-universe scale, those ideas are unproven and perhaps unlikely. What is not unlikely is the empirical fact that our universe is part of something whose dimensions and larger nature is UNKNOWABLE TO US

Re:This reminds me

[wondafucka]

I wish I could mod you down for being a rude jackass. Or at least for trying to link 5th graders and stoners.

I've got some stoner logic for you "Woah man, what if there was, like, this kind of person who was really smart, and like totally understood math and science concepts, but like, is totally stupid when it comes to dealing with people. Like they're just plain condescending and rude."

On the other hand, your logic for the existance of macro or micro organisms holds weight.

Re:That's 200 Million, not 200 Light Years

[Hoi Polloi]

I think they mean that the individual galaxies and gas clouds of the object are gravitationally bound to one another. They measure the velocities of the objects and can see that they are less than the escape velocity for the mass as a whole, just like the stars in a globular cluster.