TheGreat Wall (also calledComa Wall), sometimes specifically referred to as theCfA2 Great Wall, is an immensegalaxy filament. It is one of thelargest known superstructures in theobservable universe.
This structure was discovered c. 1989 by a team ofAmericanastronomers led byMargaret J. Geller andJohn Huchra while analyzing data gathered by the secondCfA Redshift Survey of theCenter for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA).
According to Chown, "The filament is about 300 million lightyears wide, 15 million lightyears thick and it snakes for at least 500 million lightyears across the Universe."[1]
It was discovered in 1989 byMargaret Geller andJohn Huchra based onredshift survey data from theCfA Redshift Survey.[2]
It is not known how much further the wall extends due to the light absorption in the plane of theMilky Waygalaxy where Earth is located. Thegas and dust from the Milky Way (known as theZone of Avoidance) obscure the view of astronomers and have so far made it impossible to determine if the wall ends or continues on further than they can currently observe.
In thestandard model of the evolution of the universe, such structures as the Great Wall form along and followweb-like strings ofdark matter.[3] It is thought that this dark matter dictates the structure of the Universe on the grandest of scales. Dark matter gravitationally attractsbaryonic matter, and it is this "normal" matter that astronomers see forming long, thin walls of super-galactic clusters.
