Outer Space

The BOSS Great Wall Is One Billion Light Years Wide

The universe is unfathomably big, but it somehow just keeps getting bigger. In February 2016, scientists announced the discovery of the largest structure ever found in space: the BOSS Great Wall. This giant space structure is made up of at least 830 galaxies, and it measures a staggering one billion light years across. Individual galaxies (like the Milky Way) can get clumped together into clusters by gravity. These clusters can then clump together to form superclusters, which then link together to form what are known as walls. Heidi Lietzen of the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics and her team came upon the BOSS Great Wall by looking at a vast area in space between 4.5 and 6.4 billion light years away. Watch the video below to learn about more of the biggest things in the universe.

15 Of The Largest Things In The Universe

Still, nothing on this list is a match for the BOSS Great Wall.

Key Facts In This Video

  1. The largest comet, Hale-Bopp, and is named after the two men who discovered it in 1995 despite being hundreds of miles away from each other. 00:21

  2. The Phoenix Cluster black hole has a diameter of 100 billion kilometers, which is 18 times the distance of the sun to Pluto. 06:05

  3. The largest quasar group is Huge-LQG, and is believed to contain 73 quasars. 10:32

This Is The Largest Galaxy In The Universe

Meet IC 1101.

Written by Curiosity Staff August 16, 2016
