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updated 1/11/2013 12:38:37 PM ETAstronomers have discovered the largest known structure in the

universe, a clump of active galactic cores that stretches 4 billionlight-years from end to end.The structure is a large quasar group (LQG), a collection ofextremely luminous galactic nuclei powered bysupermassive central

black holes.This particular group is so large that it challengesmodern cosmological theory, researchers said."While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quitedefinitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe,"

lead author Roger Clowes, of the University of Central Lancashire inEngland, said in a statement. "This is hugelyexciting,not least

because it runs counter to our current understanding of thescale ofthe universe."Quasarsare the brightest objects in the universe. For decades,

astronomers have known that they tend to assemble in huge groups,some of which are more than 600 million light-years wide.

But the record-breaking quasar group, which Clowes and his teamspotted in data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is onanother scale altogether. The newfound LQC is composed of 73quasars and spans about 1.6 billion light-years in most directions,though it is 4 billion light-years across at its widest point.To put that mind-boggling size into perspective, the disk of the MilkyWay galaxyhome of Earth's solar systemis about 100,000light-years wide. And the Milky Way is separated from its nearest

galactic neighbor, Andromeda, by about 2.5 million light-years.The newly discovered LQC is so enormous, in fact, that theorypredicts it shouldn't exist, researchers said. The quasar group

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appears to violate a widely accepted assumption known as thecosmological principle, which holds that the universe is essentiallyhomogeneous when viewed at a sufficiently large scale.

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Calculations suggest that structures larger than about 1.2 billion

light-years should not exist, researchers said."Our team has been looking at similar cases which add furtherweight to this challenge, and we will be continuing to investigatethese fascinatingphenomena," Clowes said.

The new study was published Friday in the Monthly Notices of theRoyal Astronomical Society.

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Monster Black Hole Is Biggest Ever Foundby Elizabeth Howell, SPACE.com ContributorDate: 28 November 2012 Time: 01:01 PM ET

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This image shows the disk galaxy NGC 1277, as seenby the Hubble Space Telescope. The small, flattened

galaxy has one of the biggest central super-massive

black holes ever found in its center, the equivalent of17 billion suns.CREDIT: NASA / ESA / Andrew C. Fabian / Remco C. E. van den Bosch (MPIA)

View full size image

Astronomers have discovered what may be the most massive black hole ever known in a small galaxy about 250 million light-years from Earth, scientists

say.

Thesupermassive black holehas a mass equivalent to 17 billion suns and is located inside the galaxy NGC 1277 in the constellation Perseus. It makes up

about 14 percent of its host galaxy's mass, compared with the 0.1 percent a normal black hole would represent, scientists said.

"This is a really oddball galaxy," said study team member Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin in a statement. "It's almost allblack hole.Thiscould be the first object in a new class of galaxy-black hole systems."

The giant black hole is about 11 times as wide as the orbit of Neptune around our sun, researchers said. The mass is so far above normal that the

scientists took a year to double-check and submit their research paper for publication, according to the study's lead author, Remco van den Bosch.

"The first time I calculated it, I thought I must have done something wrong. We tried it again with the same instrument, then a different instrument," van den

Bosch, an astronomer at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, told SPACE.com. "Then I thought, 'Maybe something else is happening.'"

[Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]

Galactic evolution questioned

The finding may have implications for our understanding ofhow giant black holesevolve in the center of galaxies.

Astronomers typically believe that the size of the central part of a galaxy, and the black hole inside of it, are linked. But the vastly different proportions seen

in NGC 1277 are calling that into question.

NGC 1277's black hole could be many times more massive than its largest known competitor, which is estimated but not confirmed to be between 6 billion

and 37 billion solar masses in size.It makes up about 59 percent of its host galaxy's central mass - the bulge of stars at the core. The object's closest

competitor is in the galaxy NGC 4486B, whose black hole takes up 11 percent of that galaxy's central bulge mass.

However, van den Bosch's team says it has also spotted five other galaxies near NGC 1277 that look about the same, and may also harbor gigantic blackholes inside of them.

"You always expect to find one sort [of a phenomenon], but now we have six of them," van den Bosch said. "We didn't expect them, because we do expect

the black holes and the galaxies to influence each other."

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The research is detailed in tomorrow's (Nov. 29) edition of the journal Nature.

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The small galaxy NGC 1277 is home to a colossal supermassive black hole and is embedded in the nearby Perseus galaxy cluster, at a distance of 250million light-years from Earth. NGC1277 is the small galaxy in the center of this image. Compared to all the other galaxies around it, NGC 1277 is verycompact and flat. Image released Nov. 28, 2012.CREDIT: David W. Hogg, Michael Blanton, and the SDSS CollaborationView full size image

Black hole census

Van den Bosch said his team discovered the mega black holes during a survey to seek "the biggest black holes we could find."

The astronomers analyzed the light coming from 700 galaxies, using an immense light-gathering telescope: the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the University

of Texas at Austin'sMcdonald Observatory.

From that large survey, they found six galaxies with stars and other objects whipping about inside of them at unusually high average speedsmore than

218 miles a second (350 kilometers). The galaxies also were small, at less than 9,784 light-years across.

Suspecting the speed and size measurements meant massive black holes lay inside these galaxies, the team usedHubble Space Telescopearchival data

of NGC 1277 and discovered the large black hole.

The team also noted that NGC 1277 has only old stars inside it. The youngest stars in the galaxy are 8 billion years old, almost twice the age of our sun.

Van den Bosch said he is curious to know if these large black holes only formed in the early years of the universe.

"It could just be this thing has been sitting around since the Big Bangand not done much since then," he said. "It might be a relic of what star formation and

galactic formation looked like at that time."

The MacDonald Observatory's StarDate night sky publication has an encyclopedia of black holes here:http://blackholes.stardate.org

Follow Elizabeth Howell@howellspace,or SPACE.com@Spacedotcom.We're also onFacebookandGoogle+.

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