A Void Within the Void

Whats to say, Imagine a cosmic blank spot that has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That’s an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness. Baffled by scientist around the world,

“This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void,” said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal. “It’s not clear that we have the right word yet … This is too much of a surprise.”

The blue zone in this image represents an unexplained empty zone in the universe about 1 billion light-years wide. Image from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from the big bang. Blue represents the cooler spot and probably a “barren” space.

Read more here. Sciencenow.sciencemag.org

~ by cosmicstrings on August 25, 2007.