Also, from Stephen Battersby (New ScientistJune 21, 2011), we learn: , “Largest cosmic structures ‘too big’ for theories”:
We know that the universe was smooth just after its birth. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the light emitted 370,000 years after the big bang, reveal only very slight variations in density from place to place. Gravity then took hold and amplified these variations into today’s galaxies and galaxy clusters, which in turn are arranged into big strings and knots called superclusters, with relatively empty voids in between.
On even larger scales, though, cosmological models say that the expansion of the universe should trump the clumping effect of gravity. That means there should be very little structure on scales larger than a few hundred million light years across.
But the universe, it seems, did not get the memo.
Researchers are finding more structure than they expected: “This is a challenging result for the standard cosmological models, … .”
Put a note in its file, Stephen. This is the second offence in one month – UD News.