So, like, the universe’s biggest structure, the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, was already a huge deal to explain with universe models because of its massive size — and now, using super powerful energy blasts in the universe, Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), astronomers found out this structure is even bigger than they thought. Plus, the team discovered parts of the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall are actually closer to Earth than they first thought.
The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is a “supercluster” of galaxies, a filament of the cosmic web where the first galaxies in the universe gathered and grew. It was named by Johndric Valdez, a teenager from the Philippines who wants to be an astronomer. But, like, the name is not super literal since the Great Wall is not just in Hercules and Corona Borealis but also in Boötes to Gemini.
The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall was first found in 2014 by István Horváth, Jon Hakkila and Zsolt Bagoly, who also did this new research to determine the size of the structure. They found out it’s even bigger than everyone thought. And, like, before this, scientists didn’t even realize that some nearby gamma-ray bursts are part of this huge structure.
The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall already covers an area that’s 10 billion light-years wide by 7.2 billion light-years and almost 1 billion light-years thick! That’s big enough for over 94,000 Milky Way galaxies to fit side by side. Crazy, right?
The Milky Way is part of a different supercluster called Laniakea, which is way smaller than the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. The real size of the Great Wall is still not known.
So, these super powerful explosions called Gamma-Ray Bursts helped find the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall in 2014 and helped with this new research. They come from dying stars or dead stars crashing into each other. The brightness of these explosions helps show where galaxies are in the universe, even when they’re too faint to see.
The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is huge, like 10 billion light-years big, and it’s only around 10 billion light-years away. This is crazy big and challenges what we thought we knew about the universe. More research is needed to figure out what this all means.
Using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the team found out more about the Great Wall. It takes a lot of observations and time to understand this massive structure. Plus, new missions are needed to learn even more about the Great Wall.
So, like, the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is a mystery that’s still being unraveled. Who knows what we’ll find out about the universe next? And, like, it’s super exciting to see what else is out there.
