The Great Nothing: The Boötes Void Is An Exceptionally Large, Rare Empty Space Stretching Over 300 Million Light-Years

Summary: Have you seen that viral internet post about a giant empty hole in space? It usually shows a picture of something called Barnard 68, claiming it is a completely empty void. But that is actually a myth! Barnard 68 is just a dark cloud of dust that blocks the light from the stars behind it. If you look at it with special infrared cameras, it is completely packed with stars.

However, real empty spaces do exist in the universe. The biggest one we know of is called the Boötes Void, or the Great Nothing. It is a massive area 330 million light-years wide. Normally, a space that big would have about 2,000 galaxies inside it. But scientists have only found about 60 galaxies in the Boötes Void! It is so incredibly empty that if our Milky Way galaxy was sitting in the middle of it, we wouldn't have even known other galaxies existed until the 1960s.

For more details, see rssapp-iflscience-com at iflscience.com/the-bootes-void-is-the-largest-in-the-known-universe-stretching-over-330-million-light-years-across-83353 (opens in new tab)