The Big Empty

Astronomers have found a massive void in the universe. Huge. Bigger than the mind can comprehend. About as hard to grasp as the massive void discovered on a Sunday morning long ago.

Astronomers have found a big empty place in the universe. A massive void.

This hole is gigantic, nearly a billion light-years across. Inside it there are no planets, no stars, no galaxies, no gases. It’s just a huge cold spot.

A whole lotta nothing.

It can stretch and even boggle your mind to think of the incredible distances between stars in the sky. You might be aware that a light-year is a unit of distance — it’s the distance that light can travel in one year. One light-year equals about six trillion miles. Quite a distance.

So how far away are the stars in the sky? Our nearest neighbor is a star called Proxima Centauri. It’s about four light-years away. Twenty-five trillion miles.

And how about that massive void, that huge cold spot in the sky? It’s between six and 10 billion light-years away from us, and it’s nearly a billion light-years across. Our tiny heads cannot even begin to comprehend a hole that gigantic. It’s been described as a big...