Stretching across 7.6 sextillion miles of space, astronomers crown it the new 'largest structure in the universe'

Move over, Shapley Superstructure; there’s a new champion in town. Astronomers have identified a cosmic filament of matter so vast that it stretches about 1.3 billion light-years – approximately 7.6 sextillion miles – from end to end.

They call it Quipu, and its sheer scale forces a rethink of how cosmic geography shapes everything from galaxy motions to the afterglow of the Big Bang.

Quipu isn’t just long, it’s very, very hefty. Weighing in at around 200 quadrillion times the mass of the Sun, this structure corrals galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter into one elongated zone.

Such bulk, concentrated in one place, can tilt measurements of cosmic expansion and subtly tweak the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

Quipu and the cosmic web

Cosmologists describe large-scale space as a web, with galaxies residing where filaments intersect. Quipu is a prime strand in that network.

It lies about 400 million to 800 million light-years from Earth – close enough to exert measurable tugs on its surroundings.

Simulations based on the popular ΛCDM model have long predicted titanic filaments, and Quipu validates those forecasts by matching their size and mass.

Only after the discovery team had mapped its outline did they realize how dominant such giants are.

The five biggest superstructures – Quipu plus Shapley, Serpens-Corona Borealis, Hercules, and Sculptor–Pegasus – host nearly half the nearby galaxy clusters, a third of all galaxies, and an eighth of the cosmic volume. Far from being oddities, they anchor the visible sky.

Following the x-ray signposts

Finding Quipu required a clever shortcut. Galaxy clusters glow in X-rays when gas inside them reaches tens of millions of degrees.

By plotting 68 x-ray-bright clusters in one swath of the heavens, researchers saw them line up like beads on a cosmic cord.

The clusters mark the densest knots of matter; trace those knots, and the filament’s spine emerges.

The effort relied on the CLASSIX survey, which stitches together data from satellite observatories to reveal the hottest, most massive clusters.

Once the spine was mapped, gravitational models filled in the unseen dark matter that threads between the bright signposts.

Quipu has a massive footprint

Quipu’s ridiculous size of 200 quadrillion solar masses means it contains roughly one-quarter of all matter in its neighborhood.

That heft produces gentle streaming motions in neighboring galaxies, nudging them off the simple Hubble flow that astronomers use to gauge cosmic expansion.

Ignore the effect, and the celebrated Hubble constant – already contentious – can slide a few percent in either direction.

Quipu also leaves fingerprints on the CMB through the Integrated Sachs–Wolfe effect. As CMB photons cross the filament’s growing gravitational well, they pick up a minuscule energy boost.

The Planck satellite captured a faint temperature bump matching predictions, hinting that future, sharper-eyed missions could nail down the signal.

Galaxies inside Quipu

Life inside a superstructure is crowded. Denser gas, hotter surroundings, and stronger gravitational tides mean galaxies burn through fuel differently than their isolated cousins.

Surveys show that clusters embedded in mammoth filaments often tip the scales at higher masses and boast richer mixes of galaxy types.

Over time, mergers within the filament can jolt gas, spark fresh waves of star formation, or, conversely, quench it by stripping fuel away.

Simulations suggest that these environmental pressures speed up galactic aging.

By comparing field galaxies with those parked along Quipu’s spine, astronomers hope to tease out exactly how crowd dynamics steer stellar birth and death.

Mapping a cosmic monster

Quipu’s elongated profile even complicates gravitational lensing. Its mass bends background light and can seed subtle distortions into sky maps.

Surveys designed to chart dark energy must correct for such lensing artifacts to avoid mistaking them for genuine features.

A single misread lens could skew catalogs of distant supernovae or galaxies used to track cosmic acceleration.

The structure might also bridge the Zone of Avoidance – a dust-filled slice of the Milky Way that hides much of the universe behind it – to the partly hidden Vela supercluster.

Upcoming radio and X-ray projects aim to peer through that dust and test whether the two colossal regions connect, potentially revealing an even larger network.

Where does Quipu go from here?

After carefully assembling the evidence, Hans Böhringer of the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) and colleagues concluded that Quipu is unlikely to remain one piece forever.

Simulations hint that its segments will drift apart over billions of years, each becoming a self-contained arena of galaxies and dark matter. For now, though, it offers a living laboratory for studying how gravity knits the cosmos.

“They are thus transient configurations. They are special physical entities with characteristic properties and special cosmic environments deserving special attention,” wrote Böhringer.

That attention is coming. New sky surveys – both ground-based and orbital – plan to chart filaments with finer detail, fold their influence into precision measurements of the CMB, and track how galaxies age inside these grand structures.

Quipu may be the latest trophy of large-scale astronomy, but more surprises surely lurk in the corridors it illuminates. Stay tuned.

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Featured image: Boasting more than 8000 galaxies and with a total mass more than ten million billion times the mass of the Sun, the Shapley Superstructure is now the second most massive structure discovered in the known Universe. Credit: ESA

The full study was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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