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So a slightly more circular shape of galaxies can be seen from our perspective than one student expected. But it turns out that it's actually not a ring when viewed from any other angle.
Then the authors AI generated a "ring in space" and it created a picture of an alien structure, and they use that for the story picture.
This is such a a non-story that nobody would even read aside from other cosmological researchers except for that completely misleading picture paired with the headline.
Not entirely. Statistics are a powerful tool, and their primary purpose is to discern order from entropy. We expect that, much like spilled marbles, the universe should form like scattered, chaotic clumps of density and sparseness with no rhyme or reason save the relatively simple interractions through gravitational forces. And it's also those forces that dictate the simple repeating structures of disk-shaped clusters orbiting a point called a galaxy, who's inner workings are, statistically, as chaotic as water molecules swirling in microgravity without breaking surface tension. Finding highly ordered structures under the scale of a galaxy and greater than a lightyear would to any statistician look like an outlier of the highest order and worth looking into.
Now as a layperson, I could see 100 billion marbles forming many shapes we would consider going against entropy, but if a statistician goes "oh that's odd," then it's probably significant.
LOL. They should have just posted some Halo CE cutscenes and called it day
Discovery of structures larger than our entire understanding of the universe can account for... and you're dismissing it because you don't like the picture?
These "structures" are not buildings or something. They are collections of stars/galaxies. So yeah. This is a silly article.
Yeah obviously they're not buildings, did you think serious cosmologists would be publishing papers about ancient aliens?
Please ELi5.
I would like to understand why this couldn't be just a random grouping of galaxies. Why would this be considered a megastructure when it could just be a coincidence that their grouped this way.
It's... The Expanse!
I thought of a supergate from stargate. But im old.
I'm older, and never watched stargate.
Oh yeah? Well im right handed and the expanse first season was great the rest meh
Oh yeah? Well I have ten toes and the Å on my keyboard to properly spell STÅRGATE 😉
Well… well shit i dont even have an A on my keyboard damnit
Hint: when you hold down the Shift key, that little a on the left side becomes an A...