CfA2 Great Wall: Cosmic Superstructure Measured in Millions of Light Years

Summary: The CfA2 Great Wall, also known as Coma Wall, is a cosmic superstructure that is measured in light years.

CfA2 Great Wall, also known as Coma Wall or Great Wall (right), represented by Hercules Superclusters, Coma Supercluster, and Leo Supercluster: Richard Powell, CC BY-SA 2.5 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

The CfA2 Great Wall is a cosmic superstructure that dramatically dwarfs the Great Wall of China, the longest man-made structure on Earth, with a length of 5,500 miles (8,851 kilometers).

CfA2, also known as Coma Wall or Great Wall, is measured in light years. Its dimensions are calculated to measure over 500 million (500,000,000) light years in length, 300 million (300,000,000) light years in width and 16 million (16,000,000) light years in thickness.

The Great Wall of the cosmos is one of the universe's largest superstructures. Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, discovered in November 2013, presently occupies first place with a maximum dimension of 10 billion (10,000,000,000) light years. Ranked in seventh place, below the elite of billion-light-year structures, CfA2 presents a maximum dimension estimated at 750 million (750,000,000) light years.

The universe's great walls are also known as galaxy filaments, great attractors and supercluster complexes. Their massive, thread-like formations border large voids in the universe. A great wall's filaments consist of clusters of gravitationally bound galaxies and also superclusters.

Clusters, which feature an intracluster medium (ICM) of superheated plasma at their center, and superclusters are found within the walls of CfA2.

Abell 1367, which contains 100-plus galaxies, is commonly known as the Leo Galaxy Cluster because of its placement in Leo the Lion constellation.

Abell 1656, which contains 1,000-plus galaxies, is commonly known as Coma Cluster because of its location within Coma Berenices, the galaxy-rich constellation containing the North Galactic Pole.

The Coma Supercluster, which encompasses more than 3,000 galaxies and includes both the Coma Cluster and the Leo Cluster, is sited in the center of the CfA2 Great Wall, at a distance of 300 million (300,000,000) light years from Earth.

Located near the Coma Supercluster are the Hercules Superclusters, a set of two proximitous galaxy superclusters with a total diameter of approximately 330 million (330,000,000) light years.

Situated between the Coma and Hercules superclusters is the Northern Local Supervoid, a mostly empty region of space sparsely populated with a few small galaxies and galaxy clusters.

American astrophysicists Margaret Joan Geller (born Dec. 8, 1947) and John Peter Huchra (Dec. 23, 1948-Oct. 8, 2010) discovered the Great Wall of the cosmos in 1989 during the second redshift survey for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The CfA's initial redshift survey, conducted from 1977 to 1982, and the second survey, from 1985 to 1989, produced pioneer maps of the large-scale structure of the universe. The distance of an object from Earth may be estimated by measuring the object's redshift, which represents an increase in the wavelength of light or of other electromagnetic radiation.

The exact boundaries of the CfA2 Great Wall are unknown because of light absorption by gas and dust in the Milky Way's Zone of Avoidance (ZOA). The ZOA obscures around 20 percent of the night sky.

Despite the inconclusiveness of its actual limits, the CfA2 Great Wall astounded its discoverers with the known extents of its spatial sprawl, probably invoking an awe similar to that experienced by first-time viewers of the Great Wall of China.

Jinshanling section of China's Great Wall, northeastern Hebei Province, northeastern China: Severin.stalder, CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

CfA2 Great Wall, also known as Coma Wall or Great Wall (right), represented by Hercules Superclusters, Coma Supercluster, and Leo Supercluster: Richard Powell, CC BY-SA 2.5 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nearsc.gif

Jinshanling section of China's Great Wall, northeastern Hebei Province, northeastern China: Severin.stalder, CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Great_Wall_of_China_at_Jinshanling.jpg

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