What is the Great Wall?
Q: What is the Great Wall?
A: The Great Wall is one of the largest known super-structures in the Universe, which is a huge group of galaxies about 200 million light-years away.
Q: How long is the Great Wall?
A: The Great Wall is over 500 million light-years long.
Q: How wide is the Great Wall?
A: The Great Wall is 300 million light-years wide.
Q: How thick is the Great Wall?
A: The Great Wall is only 15 million light-years thick.
Q: How was the Great Wall discovered?
A: The Great Wall was discovered in 1989 from redshift survey data.
Q: Why is it impossible to find out if the wall ends or continues on further?
A: Our view of the Great Wall's end is blocked by the galactic plane of the Milky Way, which obscures the view of astronomers. This area is known as the Zone of Avoidance.
Q: What is the standard model of the evolution of the universe?
A: In the standard model of the evolution of the universe, structures such as the Great Wall form along and follow web-like strings of dark matter, which dictates the structure of the Universe on the grandest of scales. Dark matter gravitationally attracts baryonic matter, and it is this 'normal' matter that astronomers see forming long, thin walls of super-galactic clusters.
