Bootes Void: The Mysterious Hole In Universe That's Billions Of Times Bigger Than Milky Way
NDTV
Voids make up around 80 per cent of observable universe and Bootes Void is one of the largest.
The universe is a vast expanse that contains everything beyond our home planet Earth. It has several galaxies, stars (or planets), black holes and many such myriad things. Even with rapid technological advancements, we are able to explore only a fraction of the universe. Among them is Bootes Void, also known as the Great Nothing. According to American space agency NASA, Bootes Void was discovered in 1981 by astronomer Richard Kirshner. It is a roughly spherical region located 700 million light years away from Earth, near the constellation of the same name.
Bootes Void is around 330 million light-years wide - a region the Milky Way could fit into billions of times over.
When astronomers started creating a map of the universe, using the available data, a pattern emerged. In the complex web of galaxies, which are arranged like clusters, there are huge empty voids with hardly any galaxies at all.