WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Scientists have observed the largest-known rotating structure in the cosmos – a gargantuan thread-like assemblage of hundreds of galaxies, gas and dark matter that makes up a filament in the macrostructure of the universe called the cosmic web.

The filament, located about 140 million light-years from Earth, was observed by scientists primarily using the MeerKAT radio telescope located in South Africa, an array of 64 interlinked satellite dishes.

The rotating filament is astonishingly large, measuring about 50 million light-years long and 117,000 light-years wide. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). By way of comparison, our Milky Way galaxy, which itself is part of a filament in the cosmic web, measures

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