There are giant empty spaces in the universe that are so large, they’re known as ‘supervoids’.
The supervoid that has received the most attention is the "supervoid" in the constellation Eridanus, also known as the Eridanus Supervoid. It is estimated to be about 1.3 billion light-years across - roughly 6 billion times larger than our entire Milky Way galaxy - and is one of the largest known structures in the universe. It has been studied extensively because its size and emptiness present challenges to our understanding of the large-scale structure of the universe and the nature of dark energy, which is thought to be responsible for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.
A supervoid is a vast, empty region in the universe that contains very few galaxies or other visible matter. It is a large region of space that is much less dense than the rest of the universe.
Supervoids are some of the largest known structures in the universe, with diameters ranging from tens to hundreds of millions of light-years. They are thought to have formed as a result of the uneven distribution of matter in the early universe, with the denser regions of the universe eventually collapsing to form clusters of galaxies, leaving behind the less dense voids.
Here’s where supervoids get truly weird.
The Eridanus Supervoid is estimated to be about 1.3 billion light-years across - roughly 6 billion times larger than our entire Milky Way galaxy.
What makes the supervoid even more incredible is that it is virtually entirely empty of matter and dark matter, the building blocks of the cosmos. Scientists are still attempting to figure out how such a large and empty emptiness could have evolved in the first place, as well as what it means for the evolution of the universe as a whole. The supervoid is a fascinating and puzzling phenomenon that reminds us how much we still don't know about our universe.
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