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.
According to the BBC, voids make up around 80 per cent of observable universe and Bootes Void is one of the largest, earning it the title of 'supervoid'. It is thought that Bootes is the product of smaller voids merging together.
How these voids were created?
When the Big Bang happened, all the matter in the universe started tightly packing together. But as per astronomers, random quantum fluctuations started creating small differences in the distribution of matter.
Some area were densely packed, meaning their gravitational pull was greater so that they pulled matter away from the less dense areas.
Soon, the pattern of galaxies started resulting in the creation of voids, and Bootes is about two per cent of the diametre of the entire observable universe.
More research on the Bootes Void revealed that it has around 60 galaxies. According to the area it covers, the Great Nothing should contain approximately 2,000 galaxies.
