The astronomers spotted a gigantic \u2018filament\u2019 of galaxies about 200 million lightyears<\/a> away, which has since been dubbed the Great Wall.<\/p> Discover the biggest things in the Universe<\/a> and a history of 3D mapping the Universe<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p> The filament is about 300 million lightyears wide, 15 million lightyears thick and it snakes for at least 500 million lightyears across the Universe.<\/p> In fact, the Great Wall may be even longer but, because it intersects the plane of our Milky Way, dust is blocking our view of its true extent.<\/p> The Great Wall isn\u2019t a \u2018supercluster\u2019 like the Virgo Supercluster<\/a>, in which many galaxy clusters<\/a> are bound together by gravity<\/a>.<\/p> It is merely a region through which a large number of galaxies are moving.<\/p> There are hints from other galaxy surveys that other Great Wall-type structures exist further out in the Universe.<\/p> In 2003, astronomers discovered the Sloan Great Wall, the biggest known structure in the Universe, a billion lightyears away and 1.4 billion lightyears long.<\/p> The existence of structures as large as the Great Wall is difficult to explain because there has been so little time since the Big Bang for gravity to pull together such vast quantities of matter.<\/p> Cosmologists have been forced to propose that the Universe contains six to seven times as much invisible matter as visible stars and galaxies.<\/p>Other Great Walls are available…<\/strong><\/h2>
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