A glowing cosmic structure millions of light-years long represents the aftermath of the impact of two merging galaxy clusters, researchers say.
"This is one of the biggest structures ever observed," study lead author Ettore Carretti told SPACE.com. "It is more than 100 times the size of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which already stretches for 100,000 light-years."
Carretti, an astrophysicist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, and his colleagues used the Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales to analyze a cluster of galaxies known as Abell 3667. The cluster lies about 730 million light-years from Earth. (A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about 5.9 trillion miles.)
Did you know there are only 5000 Snow Leopards in the wild now and they are confined to Central Asia? However, the effective global population (those likely to reproduce) is less than half that number.
02-02-2013
Intergalactic crash scene among universe's largest things
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