Gap in the universe

Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa might have found the single largest structure ever in the universe, and the only sign of it is nothing. Don't let the visible 2d size mislead you: that empty space is 1.8 billion light years across. That’s 18,000 times larger than our entire galaxy.

This is an empty section of space which is missing roughly 10,000 galaxies. It sits in a region of space which is much colder than other parts of the universe and although it is not a vacuum, it seems to have around 20 per cent less matter than other regions. Getting through such a big hole takes hundreds of millions of years, even at the speed of light, and photons of light slow down as they cross because the universe – and therefore the void - is continually expanding. It’s also possible we’re just seeing the first hints of an exotic new kind of physics that hasn’t been fully integrated with the standard model. This may also be more evidence for dark energy. But there’s a lot of nothing still to study.

And a lot of something.