Believe it or not, astronomers have found an enormous void in space that measures nearly a billion light-years across. This void is empty of both normal matter – such as galaxies and stars – and the mysterious “dark matter” that cannot be seen directly with telescopes. One of the researchers said: “If you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take you several years to get to the nearest stars in our own Milky Way galaxy; but if you were to go to this hole and enter one side, you’d have to travel for a billion years before you would get to the other side.” Continue reading for a video and more information.
“It’s hard even for astronomers to picture how big these things are,” conceded Minnesota’s Professor Lawrence Rudnick. The void is roughly 6-10 billion light-years away and takes a sizeable chunk out of the visible Universe in its direction. The “hole” is located in the direction of the Eridanus constellation and has been identified in data from a survey of the sky made at radio wavelengths.
