Dear Commons Community,

MSNBC and several other news media are reporting that  astronomers have discovered the largest known structure in the universe, a clump of active galactic cores that stretches 4 billion light-years from end to end. The structure is a large quasar group (LQG), a collection of extremely luminous galactic nuclei powered by supermassive central black holes. This particular group is so large that it challenges modern cosmological theory, researchers said.

“While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe,” lead author Roger Clowes, of the University of Central Lancashire in England, said in a statement. “This is hugely exciting, not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe.”

Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe. For decades, astronomers have known that they tend to assemble in huge groups, some of which are more than 600 million light-years wide.

But the record-breaking quasar group, which Clowes and his team spotted in data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is on another scale altogether. The newfound LQC is composed of 73 quasars and spans about 1.6 billion light-years in most directions, though it is 4 billion light-years across at its widest point.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Daily News is reporting that there’s a Texas style feud brewing between Rick Perry and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Perry, the Texas governor who became something of a laughing stock during his bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination last year and is considered to be a possible 2016 Republican presidential contender, took a swipe at Andrew Cuomo during a policy forum on Thursday.

“You could say that the economic climate that has allowed (Texas) to grow and create jobs, he’d dearly love to be able to stand up and say, ‘We did this in New York.’ But he can’t.”

Perry also said Cuomo, “if he were truthful” would admit that he’d want to be a Texan.

“I’m sure that I couldn’t get all 49 other governors to admit that they would want to be Texans,” Perry said, according to The Associated Press.

Cuomo administration officials did not immediately respond to Perry’s jab.

Let the fun begin, we only have just under four years left until the next presidential election.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A blogger passionate about historic photography techniques serendipitously found some old photos inside a camera that he bought at an antique store.

Last week, Anton Orlov of the Photo Palace blog was cleaning the Jumelle Belllieni stereoscopic camera (picture below) and found the images completely by accident. According to his blog, he opened the film chamber and saw the negatives on a stack of glass plates.

“While viewing the images in their negative form it was difficult to say for sure what was on each of them, but after scanning them it became clear that they dated back to the First World War and were taken somewhere in France,” Orlov wrote.

Interesting stuff for World War I buffs.

Tony