If you hear someone talking about giant, glowing space blobs, they aren’t talking about a 1950s sci-fi movie. Space blobs are real. Technically, they’re called Lyman-alpha blobs, or LABs, but I think “space blob” is more descriptive.
Space blobs appear to be enormous clouds of hydrogen gas filled with galaxies. They exist in the far distant reaches of the Universe, which means they exist far back in time. The first space blob was discovered in year 2000. Designated LAB-1, it is 11.5 billion light-years from us. That means it appears to us now as it looked 11.5 billion years ago.
For all we know, we could be inside a space blob or a former space blob. If we were, would we know it? If observers within LAB-1 pointed a telescope our way, our part of the Universe would appear to them as it looked 11.5 billion years ago. It’s possible our Local Group of galaxies is all that remains of an ancient space blob.
There might be a sci-fi story here. A long time ago, in a space blob far, far away…
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