Why Is This Part of the Universe So Empty? | Boötes Void Explained

Imagine staring into the night sky only to find nothing staring back. Not darkness but emptiness. A void so vast, so silent, it feels like the universe forgot to fill in the blanks. This is The Universe Factory and this video is all about a vast relatively empty region of space. Before we begin quickly subscribe to the channel and hit that Bell notification if you haven't already and find us on social media platforms. Links to which have been mentioned down in the description make sure to check out. This is the Bortis Void. A place in the universe where there are almost no galaxies, no stars, just an ocean of nothingness. Discovered in 1981 astronomer Robert Kirshner and his team found something unsettling. A sphere nearly 330 million light-years across with over 99% less matter than the rest of the observable universe. It is also referred to as the Great Nothing. Located approximately 700 million light-years away from the near the constellation Bortis, it is one of the largest known voids in the universe, spanning about 300 million light-years across. Instead of the expected 2,000 galaxies, it contains only around 60. Hence its name is void. To give you perspective, if our entire galaxy was a grain of sand, the Bortis Void would be a football stadium with just a few grains lying alone in the corners. It's not just empty, it's disturbingly empty. So much so that it challenges how we think the universe formed. There are no major apparent inconsistencies between the existence of the Bortis Void and the Lambda CDA model of cosmological evolution. Some scientists believe it was formed by the merging of smaller voids, like bubbles colliding in the cosmic wall, while the others, they whisper the theories that maybe something removed the galaxies, or worse, that they never formed at all. This would account for the small number of the galaxies that populate a roughly tube-shaped region running through the middle of the void. In a universe overflowing with the stars and the stories, the Bortis Void is a quiet reminder that space is not just full of things, it's also full of mysteries. The greatest mystery is not what we see, but what we do not. If this made you look up at the night sky a little differently tonight, hit that like button and share this video with your friends and family. Subscribe for more cosmic wonders and hit the bell icon to get notified for each and every update on astronomy. Remember, the universe isn't just strange, it's stranger than we can imagine. Meanwhile, watch these videos in the suggestions curated especially for you. I'll be back with yet another super interesting video for you soon. Till then, keep looking up!