Have you ever worried about nothing? Let me rephrase the question. Have you ever worried about absence of any matter at one place? A place so huge that if you are stuck there, there is practically no way out of it. Maybe you can’t fathom it right. But I will still tell you what this is about. I am talking about the Boötes Void.
Boötes Void is a giant empty area of space which is about 700 million light years away from Earth. It is an empty space with a diameter of 250 million light years, whereas Milky Way’s diameter is 120 million light years. This void is located in the Boötes constellation, hence the name. This void has been baffling scientists since its discovery by Robert Kirschner in 1981.
Ofcourse, a void in space is not an uncommon thing. Rather the universe is a mass of clusters of galaxies divided by voids in between them. But what makes Boötes different than those other voids is that it is HUUUUGGGEEEE. It is 25% of the entire universe. The void contains around 60 galaxies in it, where instead a normal area of space of this size would contain around 10,000 galaxies. This is what boggles the scientists and thus, they have been forming theory around this anomaly of the Universe.
Theories Around Boötes Void
Big Bang Theory Is A Lie:
Boötes Void, if thought, basically disapproves the validity of the Big Bang Theory. According to the Big Bang Theory, an explosion led to spread of energy and mass smoothly and uniformly across space. Due to molecular fluctuation there was formation of subatomic elements, atoms, gases, stars and so on. This creation of matter has still been uniform across the universe, other than when we talk of Boötes Void.
Dark Energy Bubble:
A dark energy is said to be the force that drives the expansion of the universe. So, it can be easily said that maybe Boötes Void is a dark energy bubble that is moving other galaxies to move farther away from it and thus creating a greater void. Now if this is true, what is really worrying is the question of what in Boötes Void is really emitting this dark energy. So much is this supposed dark energy that it is moving tens of thousands of galaxies apart. What if there is an object in the void that emits dark energy that we do not even have a clue about the existence of?
Aliens:
This has to be a theory, because what fun is space without the thought of Aliens in it? Now, what if an alien civilization started spawning right in the middle of Boötes Void and as it grew it started capturing one after another galaxy that came in its way. Upon capturing maybe that species turned these galaxies into power stations thus stopping any light going out of the galaxy. As the luminosity is slowly getting eaten away, maybe it’s fair to say in such a case that after all Boötes Void is not really empty.
Gravity At Work:
One of the most boring and probably the most probable theory for the existence of Boötes Void can be that it is formed after two voids came together and combined with each other to form a super-void. This is possible if two voids get attracted with each other due to the pulling gravitational forces acting at each of their edges. Thus, they end up forming one body.
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Thinking about such unexplained anomaly of the universe is amusing and scary at the same time. Things like these make us humans realize just how little we know about our own home. Even with years of research and data collecting, we still have a lot to learn. Makes one wonder if Star Wars could be a reality and we just do not know yet!