Redshift Surveys of Galaxies Find a Bubbly Universe
DOI: 10.1063/1.2814996
“The distribution of galaxies in [our] redshift survey is like a slice through the suds in the kitchen sink.” With this deceptively mundane metaphor, a report in the 1 March issue of Astrophysical Letters presents us with an astonishing new view of structure in the cosmos on the largest scale we know about. The authors, Valerie de Lapparent, Margaret Geller and John Huchra of the Harvard‐Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, conclude from a complete compilation of the redshifts of the 1100 brightest galaxies in an extensive strip of sky near our galactic north pole that the galaxies are sharply concentrated at the surfaces of contiguous, bubblelike structures with diameters as large as 50 megaparsecs (150 million light years).
