With an abundance of dying stars icy worlds rogue comets black holes and even cannibal galaxies
space sure is one spooky place but one particular area of space known as the bote's void perhaps
takes the title for officially being one of the most mysterious places in outer space the massive
expanse of emptiness is nearly 300 million light years wide and unlike any observed in the universe
welcome to Factnomenal and for today's video we take a journey to yet another
one of space's many mysteries that science just can't seem to explain the ot's void
when you hear the word void you would simply understand it as being empty pure nothingness
and in space well it gets even more interesting cosmic voids and supervoids are basically large
volumes of space that are completely devoid of any matter this may include normal matter in
the form of galaxies as well as dark matter so when exactly were these voids discovered
it all began in 1961 when some large structures were brought to the attention of the astronomical
community without the kind of technology we now have today it was unclear what exactly these were
and that clarity didn't come until years later the study of cosmic voids itself began way back in the
mid-1970s when something called red shift surveys had led a team of astrophysicists to identify
superclusters and voids within the distribution of galaxies the new redshift surveys completely
revolutionized the field of astronomy and added so much more depth to the two-dimensional maps
that were previously being used with the help of these surveys we were then able to study
maps of cosmological structures in a more precise manner and brought about some much needed clarity
this allowed for what we know as the 3d mapping or three-dimensional mapping of the universe
in 1978 two papers on the topic of voids in the large-scale structure were released
referencing the voids found in the foreground of the coma a1367 clusters but 1981 proved to
be the true year of breakthrough it was robert kirschner who at the time was working at the
university of michigan to calculate the redshifts of a great number of galaxies
now due to the way our universe is expanding the farther away a galaxy is
the faster it moves which means red shift can be used to measure distance taking advantage
of this very fact kirchner and his team were attempting to create a 3d map of the universe
but as they went on with their mapping they soon realized something just wasn't quite right at a
distance of 700 million light years from planet earth there was just a blank void a spherical
region that was about 330 million light years wide where there were barely any galaxies at all
this was contradictory of course to what was previously believed about the universe
as they were unable to completely explain why the region didn't seem to have anything there
the area came to be known as the great nothing the great nothing was given the name baude's
void for lying in the constellation bodes the team of researchers also published all
their surprising discoveries in the paper a million cubic megaparsec void in the botase
ever since then the surveys have been able to create much more detailed maps of our universe
as opposed to what was previously thought we now know that the galaxies in the universe
are arranged sort of like a giant web throughout the galaxy you will find long structures known as
filaments cosmic filaments are dense skinny strands of dark matter and galaxies they hold most
of the universe's mass and you can think of the filaments as the threads connecting the cosmic web
the place where these filaments meet and there are a large number of galaxies is known as a
cluster and it is here in between these threads and clusters that we find huge empty voids of
nothingness over the years of studying these maps of the universe astronomers and researchers
were in fact astonished to find that about 80 percent of the observable universe is actually
just made up of these voids not to mention the fact that most of them are around 30
to 300 million light years across these are the largest known structures in the universe
and we are learning more and more about them every year
this brings us to the burning question how were these voids formed or did they always exist
the true cause of these voids is said to be closely tied to the origin of the universe
in the early days of the cosmos all the matter in the universe was tightly packed together
at first it was thought to be uniform but random quantum fluctuations soon began creating small
differences in the distribution of this matter over time some of these areas were slightly more
dense which means that the gravitational pull was greater therefore they pulled matter away
from the less dense areas at the same time the universe was expanding greatly so the
fluctuations that had begun at a quantum level now spend hundreds of millions of light years
the significantly smaller clumps of matter begin to organize themselves into what we know today
as galaxies although this doesn't answer their existence completely this seems to be the more
acceptable theory as to why and how these voids exist some suggest that the super voids could
have been formed when two or more ordinary voids could have collided with each other others say
it may have something to do with intelligent life beyond our planet that could possibly be
hiding something there there have been several conspiracy theories over the years each one
wackier than the next but then again space is just one of those places where anything seems possible
the bow taste super void or great beauty's void measures somewhere
between 250 to approximately 300 million light years in diameter to put that into perspective
one light year is equivalent to the distance that light travels in one year on planet earth
it represents approximately 0.27 percent of the diameter of the observable universe which itself
is a daunting 93 billion light years across the bow taste void is a giant hole in the universe
with its volume estimated at 236 000 million cubic per sec cubed making it one of the largest
known voids in the entire universe after its discovery all attention was on the body's void
researchers were astonished to find just how sparse the area really is it's important to note
here though that after lots of observation it was found to have at least 60 galaxies
for us that may seem like a lot but it's almost insignificant in terms of space astronomer greg
aldering put things into perspective when he stated if the milky way had been located
in the center of the body's void we wouldn't have known there were even other galaxies until
the 1960s wouldn't that be something living in a world where you believe that your galaxy is
the only one out there only to be neighbors with huge monster galaxies and not even know about them
our own milky way has around two dozen neighbors within three million light years of space so by
those statistics the beauty's void should have at least ten thousand galaxies but the reality is
just a mere spattering of about 60 odd galaxies millions of light years away from each other
what astronomers are even more bothered by is the fact that the galaxies that were
found inside the void were significantly less bright than the average galaxy there probably
are some dwarf galaxies within the void but they haven't been a belt to detect the same as yet
what's quite interesting too is the fact that galaxies are found in a tube area that runs
through the void which only further supports the hypothesis that the void could have been formed
through the merger of smaller voids the beauty supervoid is quite the mystery and some even say
to fully explain its existence we would have to modify our existing theory of the big bang itself
both quantum mechanics and gravity played a role in forming the super void but no one really has
found a way of combining the two in a way that we can understand this gigantic cosmic hole
bote supervoid may be the most infamous and largest one yet but it's not the only one that
has scientists and astronomers puzzled after the big bang the universe was glowing extremely bright
and was so hot that atoms couldn't form eventually after things cooled down most of the energy from
the event took the form of light this afterglow is known as the cosmic microwave background or
cmb today with the help of modern technology and advanced telescopes it can be seen at microwave
frequencies unviewable to human eyes it has tiny little fluctuations in temperature that
can actually provide information about the early universe so in simple terms by looking at the cmb
scientists can find variations in the temperatures in the universe through these variances we are
able to see where things are more clustered like say galaxies for example it would also be able
to show where things are completely empty like a void the cmb anomaly the largest cold spot that
was ever found is theorized as being a super void the only problem was a cold spot in the cmb that
scientists just could not seem to explain there were indeed many theories floating around at the
time about what this could possibly be with the help of data collected by the dark energy survey
using a map of dark matter the researchers made a startling discovery this was no cold spot but yet
another super void in the constellation eredanus one of the largest structures known to humanity
stretching out at a distance of 1.8 billion light years proved to be the answer to the cosmic wave
background anomaly it has been observed to contain about 30 percent less matter than its surrounding
galactic region much like the body supervoid the aradonna supervoid is extraordinarily large and
approximately 500 million light years across and is the largest known structure of the universe of
course not everyone thinks that the cold spot is a void the explanation is far too simple for them
one researcher even believes that the cmb cold spot could be an imprint of another universe
the doorway to other realms lara mercini huffton the one who came up with this theory
suggested that this region came about through a form of quantum entanglement that occurred between
our universe and a parallel universe before they were separated as far-fetched as it may seem
it sure is an interesting hypothesis but if the hypothesis were to hold up there would indeed have
to be evidence in the form of a mirror supervoid located in the opposite hemisphere oddly enough
there actually was a super void in the southern hemisphere that was discovered
which just seemed to fit the bill for this theory perfectly though it still might be a stretch it's
sure worth mentioning as there is no condense in exactly where the mirror voids should be located
another theory proposed by lawrence rudnick from the university of minnesota states
that the aerodynas void is not a conventional void at all but actually it is a universe in
mass black hole that has consumed all the matter in its vicinity in short it simply
ate up everything that was surrounding it and that's why there's literally nothing left
he and his team strongly believe that dark energy the force that is responsible for the
accelerating expansion of the universe is all just an illusion that has been brought on by
the gravitational effects of a supermassive black hole that lies at the very edge of our universe
with theories like that it's quite possible that the cold spot itself never existed in the first
place putting all theories and arguments to rest for years scientists have been trying to figure
a way out of the cold spot argument which had plagued them for years however the super
void solution comes with one major problem the standard cosmology models just simply don't fit in
according to them the void should not exist at all a study that was conducted in 2017 states
that the studies conducted showed no evidence that associated voids in the line of sight could
have been the cause for the cmb cold spot and that it may instead have a primordial origin
this only made the arguments for a parallel universe stronger later in december 2021
the dark energy survey after analyzing their data actually put forward strong evidence for
a direct correlation between aerodyna super void and the cmb cold spot which seemingly put to rest
a lot of the more far-fetched theories out there bringing it down to the simple answer nothing
then we have yet another void the taurus void adjacent to the perseus pisces supercluster
unlike boots and aerodynas this void isn't as big but by no means is it insignificant a few
galaxies were actually found in this void ugc 2627 and ugc 2629 which are approximately 185 million
light years away but where this void is unique is that it is actually close to earth but despite its
proximity this void is not well studied at all why you ask well thanks to something known as
the zone of avoidance zoa the areas of the sky that are obscured by the milky way
the taurus void lies right behind this area making it one of the most difficult to study
because there is so much area of the void that lies behind an area of high extinction
scientists are faced with that challenge of trying to determine its density and true dimensions
even when it comes to galaxies light from dimmer galaxies lying behind the milky way would probably
extinguish before it could even reach earth making it all the more difficult to determine where it is
truly a void this however was soon settled when the void was observed in the infrared
spectrum there was then no doubt that the void was indeed just that a vast expanse of nothing
some other notable voids researchers have come across are canis major void
columbavoid microscopium void sculptor void etc these of course are simply what we have been
able to observe for now how many more regions of empty space are out there no one really knows yet
could there be any better explanations for why these voids exist and remain the way they are
though there might be so much more to learn about these large structures in space
there's one thing that's for certain the universe is so much bigger than we could ever comprehend
the discovery of super like paotes aerodynas and more offers a humbling reminder of the
vastness of the world beyond our home planet and how much we are yet to learn about the
universe we live in so what are your thoughts about these massively mysterious supervoids
tell us in the comments don't forget to smash the like button and subscribe to our channel so
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