The Great Wall is the largest known super-structure in the Universe. It is approximately 200 million light-years away and has dimensions which measure over 500 million light-years long, 300 million light-years wide and only 15 million light-years thick. It was discovered in 1989 by Margaret Geller and John Huchra based on redshift survey data.

It is not known how much further the wall extends due to the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy in which we are located. The gas and dust from the Milky Way obscure our view and have so far made it impossible to determine if the wall ends or continues on further than we can currently observe.

As for the origin of the Great Wall, it should be noted that current thinking hypothesizes that such structures form along and follow web-like strings of dark matter. It is this dark matter which dictates the structure of the Universe on the grandest of scales. Dark matter gravitationally attracts normal matter and it is this normal matter that we see forming thin long walls of Super-Galactic clusters.

See also

• Large-scale structure of the cosmos