Quipu is Mayan for Yo Mama.
I hate the way they talk about this thing. They keep calling it a super structure like it’s one contiguous mass. It’s not one mass, it’s a gargantuan cluster of galaxies. In fact it’s more like a cluster of galaxy clusters. So like if a galaxy is a system and galaxies can move together in gravity locked groups, this is a bunch of those galaxy clusters that are gravity locked to each other as well.
Quipu isn’t a gravitationally locked group. Nothing larger than galactic clusters are bound together by gravity because gravity is too weak. Superstructures like this are more like a remnant of something that happened or existed billions of years ago when the structure was smaller and the mass confined to a smaller area.
Think of it like an impact crater. The ridge on one side of the crater doesn’t really affect the ridge on the other side and neither has any connection to any debris that was scattered nearby during the impact. But they are all a record of that impact and we can learn about the impact by studying them.
To be clear, while the galaxies that make up Quipu are not gravitationally bound together, the article points out that their combined mass can effect on gravitational lensing and the CMB as it passes through the structure.
Quipus are fascinating if anyone needs a different rabbit hole to go down. Imagine an analog hard drive using knots in string
“That’s more than 1.3 billion light-years.” Oooo-kay
