Wall of galaxies in the context of Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall

⭐ Core Definition: Wall of galaxies

In cosmology, galaxy filaments are the largest known structures in the universe, consisting of walls of galactic superclusters. These massive, thread-like formations can commonly reach 50 to 80 megaparsecs (160 to 260 megalight-years)—with the largest found to date being Quipu (400 megaparsecs), and possibly the still unconfirmed Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall at around 3 gigaparsecs (9.8 Gly) in length—and form the boundaries between voids. Due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, the individual clusters of gravitationally bound galaxies that make up galaxy filaments are moving away from each other at an accelerated rate; in the far future they will dissolve.

Galaxy filaments form the cosmic web and define the overall structure of the observable universe.

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Wall of galaxies in the context of Quipu (supercluster)

Quipu is a large-scale superstructure of galaxies of the Universe, a wall of galaxies or galaxy hypercluster composed of knots of galaxy clusters. As of 2025, it is the largest known structure in the Universe, some 1.3 billion light years long (1.3×10 light-years (7.6×10 mi; 1.2×10 km)); and the most massive known structure, containing 2×10 solar masses (4.0×10 kg; 8.8×10 lb; 4.0×10 t),or about 200,000 times the mass of the Milky Way.

The structure was discovered by Hans Böhringer and colleagues using data from the ROSAT X-ray satellite, and described in a 2025 paper on arXiv. It was named "quipu" as it is reminiscent of the Andean knotted textile called quipu that Böhringer had seen in a museum near Santiago, Chile, while he was working at the European Southern Observatory.

View the full Wikipedia page for Quipu (supercluster)

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