A team of international astronomers has made an incredible discovery, finding the first known "bubble of galaxies" that stretches across a staggering one billion light-years. This cosmic structure, which is believed to be a fossilized remnant from just after the Big Bang, is 10,000 times wider than our own Milky Way galaxy.

The bubble, named Ho'oleilana, is located approximately 820 million light-years away from us and is considered part of the nearby universe. Lead author Brent Tully, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, stumbled upon this remarkable finding while searching through new catalogues of galaxies.

The bubble was so enormous that it overflowed beyond the region of the sky they er initially studying. To visualize the structure, the researchers enlisted the help of Australian cosmologist Cullan Howlett, who used mathematical calculations to determine its spherical shape and the position of the galaxies within it.

The bubble, described as a spherical shell with a heart, contains the Bootes supercluster of galaxies and several other known galaxy superclusters, including the massive Sloan Great Wall. This discovery confirms a hypothesis first proposed by Jim Peebles, a Canadian-American cosmologist, in 1970.

According to Peebles, during the early stages of the universe, sound waves called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) were created as a result of the interaction between gravity and radiation. These BAOs caused bubbles to form in the primordial plasma, which solidified as the universe cooled down, resembling the shape seen today.

This finding has significant implications for our understanding of the universe's expansion rate and could potentially revolutionize the field of cosmology. Howlett suggests that the bubble's larger size than expected indicates that the universe has expanded beyond previous predictions.

This discovery underscores the ongoing progress in cosmological research and highlights the need for re-evaluating our current models of the universe. In the future, more bubbles similar to Ho'oleilana may be detected, thanks to the Euclid space telescope and the Square Kilometre Array, advanced observatories being developed to capture and analyze a broader range of the universe. These powerful instruments will provide additional insights into galactic structures and further our understanding of the cosmos.