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.
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.