Scientists have discovered the largest structure in the universe, and it turns out to be nothing more than a supervoid. In layman’s terms, that’s a really big hole full of nothingness. The supervoid was discovered during a recent astronomical survey led by Istvan Szapudi. Szapudi said that the blob, which measures about 1.8 billion light years across, may be “the largest individual structure ever identified by humanity.”
The targeted survey confirmed the hole’s existence by noting that approximately 10,000 galaxies were conspicuously absent from the region of the universe. Previous reports found the area surrounding the supervoid to be unusually cool, so the recent discovery of this largest structure in the universe may explain the isolated “Cold Spot.” Scientists believe the Cold Spot may be a result of the supervoid draining energy and heat from light passing through the area.
“The Cold Spot raised a lot of eyebrows,” said Professor Carlos Frenk, at the University of Durham. “The real question was what was causing it and whether it was a challenge to orthodoxy.” The supervoid’s existence may also shed light on the universe’s creation in the wake of the Big Bang. Light photons scattered by the event would have lost energy and heat traveling through the void, creating unusual conditions for some parts of the universe.
The supervoid isn’t a vacuum, or totally bereft of matter, but simply less dense. The hole is 20% less dense than the typical region, such as the one containing earth. This is remarkable and unprecedented as the universe’s density is generally evenly distributed, especially on a scale as large as the supervoid’s.
“This is the greatest supervoid ever discovered,” said András Kovács, co-author at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. “In combination of size and emptiness, our supervoid is still a very rare event. We can only expect a few supervoids this big in the observable universe.”
Although the mystery of the Cold Spot may be solved, scientists still have to dig deeper to understand the supervoid and its formation. Strangely, the largest structure in the universe may only account for 10% of the region’s drop in temperature. The incomplete explanation may only be answerable by something called “exotic physics,” or new, unexplored branches of astronomy and physics scientists don’t yet know about.
Although surely this is not what was meant by galaxy “cold spots,” do check out this video featuring a Polar adventurer’s adventures around in the colder spots on Earth:
https://youtu.be/ApTVgkGB19A
