A team of astronomers reported the most distant proto-supercluster found so far, named COSMOS-z3.1-A. We see it as it looked when the universe was only about 2.1 billion years old. It is made of about 10 dense groups of young galaxies that are still gathering together, and its total mass is roughly 5,000 times the mass of the Milky Way.
The structures in this study came from the ODIN survey, which used the Dark Energy Camera on a telescope in Chile, and were followed up with other instruments. The results were published in The Astrophysical Journal. The team found the clump sits where filaments of the cosmic web cross, which is where the standard picture says big structures should form.
Why it matters: Galaxies aren’t scattered randomly. Gravity pulls them into a huge web, and the biggest clumps form where its strands meet. Catching one this early gives astronomers a rare look at that process in action. Gravity is also the topic behind our black holes and dark matter lessons.