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=START=   XMT: 10:44 Thu Feb 22  EXP: 11:00 Thu Mar 01

U.S. AND BRITISH ASTRONOMERS FIND "COSMIC PICKET FENCE"

WASHINGTON (FEB. 22) UPI -  Astronomers may have discovered a ''cosmic picket
fence'' - more than a dozen huge clumps of galaxies posted at surprisingly even
intervals throughout the universe, researchers said.

U.S. and British researchers said an analysis of data collected from deep in
the universe found the unexpected pattern, challenging accepted notions about
galaxy formation.

''No theories that have been proposed so far have a good explanation as to how
the universe could have such a regular pattern,'' said David Koo, an astronomer
at the University of California-Santa Cruz who was part of the research team.

''It challenges the fundamental view of our universe that it's largely a smooth
uniform space. That's the assumption that scientists have always made. Finding
these structures or clumps on such large scales is disturbing,'' he said.

The report, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, drew conflicting
reaction from other experts.

''It's pretty amazing,'' said Nick Kaiser, an astronomy professor at the
University of Toronto in Canada. ''It appears to show the universe has
large-scale structure which is very regular. If it is confirmed, theorists will
really have to go back to square one.''

Others were more skeptical.

''On the positive side, it's further evidence that there are big structures in
the universe. But I'm very skeptical of the claim of periodicity,'' said
Margaret Geller, a Harvard University astronomer. ''I just don't think they
pushed the analysis as hard as I might like to see.''

Geller and her colleagues previously reported they had discovered a ''Great
Wall'' of galaxies that formed the largest structure ever found in the
universe.

The new report indicates the ''Great Wall'' is just the first of a series of
''Great Walls'' - gigantic clusters of galaxies - that extend out into the
universe at regular intervals about 400 million light years apart with
relatively little visible matter in between, researchers said. A light year is
equal to about 6 trillion miles.

The pattern could be likened to a ''cosmic picket fence,'' Koo said in a
telephone interview. But he stressed the data, based on observations of light
from galaxies up to 5 billion light years away, was drawn from a relatively
narrow region of outer space and the phenomenon may not be found everywhere.

Alexander Szalay, an astronomer from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who
was involved in the research, offered a different way of looking at the
pattern. ''Imagine a series of Great Walls. It's as if we pierced an extremely
narrow needle through the universe and hit one wall after another,'' he said.

If true, the pattern challenges long-held assumptions.

''It could mean that the structure of the universe was not formed by the
effects of gravity alone. Most astronomers believe that gravity is the most
important force we see in the universe. These structures are so vast that even
gravity hasn't had enough time to form them,'' Koo said.

The data was collected by researchers from the University of California-Santa
Cruz, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago at the Kitt Peak National
Observatory in Arizona, as well as by astronomers from the University of Durham
in Great Britain at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Australia.

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