One of the basic principles of modern science is that the physics we understand here, on Earth, work everywhere. This turns out to be a pretty good assumption, because we see it coming true time and again. That knowledge can then be used to figure out things that are happening at very large distances — even well across the Universe.

With that in mind, I present to you LAB-1: a glowing glob of gas as seen by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope:

[Click to, um, englobenate.]

This, however, is no ordinary Space Blob: it’s located at the staggering distance of 11.5 billion light years from Earth! Not very many objects have been seen farther away than this, and it’s one of the single biggest discrete structures seen this far away. It’s about 300,000 light years across — three quintillion kilometers, or three times the diameter of our own galaxy. That’s pretty flipping big.

And although it’s faint to our telescopes, at that distance it must actually be tremendously luminous for us to see it at all. Something is making it glow fiercely, but what? One hint is in the ...