Lurking some nine billion light years away from Earth is what appears to be a so-called cosmic megastructure in the shape of an enormous ring. It’s so large that its existence should be impossible, according to new research reported on by The Guardian, challenging a fundamental assumption of our understanding of the Universe.

Known as the “Big Ring,” the structure spans an astonishing 1.3 billion light years in diameter — a significant portion of the observable Universe’s estimated size of 94 billion light years. By contrast, the largest known galaxy is a “mere” 16 million light years across. If it were visible in the night sky to the naked eye, the Big Ring would be equal in diameter to fifteen full moons. Succinctly put: it’s unfathomably huge.

The unpublished findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Thursday, add to a growing list of inexplicably large structures that remain confounding — if not controversial — to scientists.

Cornell University astrobiologists have devised a novel way to determine ocean temperatures of distant worlds based on the thickness of their ice shells, effectively conducting oceanography from space.

Available data showing ice thickness variation already allows a prediction for the upper ocean of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, and a NASA mission’s planned orbital survey of Europa’s ice shell should do the same for the much larger Jovian moon, enhancing the mission’s findings about whether it could support life.

The researchers propose that a process called “ice pumping,” which they’ve observed below Antarctic ice shelves, likely shapes the undersides of Europa’s and Enceladus’ ice shells, but should also operate at Ganymede and Titan, large moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. They show that temperature ranges where the ice and ocean interact — important regions where ingredients for life may be exchanged — can be calculated based on an ice shell’s slope and changes in water’s freezing point at different pressures and salinities.

Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates. Now, scientists using the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have confirmed that the observation is not down to a measurement error.

The first detection of water molecules on the surface of asteroids has been confirmed, following spectral analysis of two large main‑belt objects.

Credit: Courtesy of NASA/Carla Thomas/SwRI

Using data from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) – a joint project of NASA and Germany’s space agency – scientists have, for the first time, discovered water molecules on the surface of an asteroid. A team of researchers looked at four silicate-rich asteroids using an instrument known as Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST), which isolated the mid-infrared spectral signatures indicating molecular water on two of them.