Science fiction authors writing space travel adventures sometimes use voids in space-- areas where nothing exists. Well, now scientists have found not simply the real thing, but the granddaddy of them all.
University of Minnesota astronomers using the VLA radio telescope facility near Soccoro, New Mexico, found a void in the universe nearly a billion light-years across. Only a few stars exist in the area. There also seems to be little to no gas, and not even any dark matter, that mysterious stuff scientists believe accounts for a good chunk of the mass of the universe.
The discovery caught astronomers by surprise. Astronomers knew of similar areas, but nothing remotely on the scale of this one, and they have no explanation for it. That is a good thing. After all, if today's scientists could completely explain everything, what would humans do for the next few thousand generations?
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