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The Bootes void is the largest known void in the universe, with a diameter of 250 million light-years and only a few dozen scattered galaxies. It likely has the lowest particle densities and is difficult to locate dark matter. The void is larger than predicted by current understanding, and its existence since the Big Bang creates mystery.
The Bootes void is the largest void in the known universe. It is a region 250 million light-years in diameter, located in the direction of the constellation Bootes, which contains only a few dozen galaxies scattered in the shape of a rough tube in between. The Bootes vacuum is so large that its diameter is a full 2% of the diameter of the observable universe. Discovered in 1981 by Robert Kirshner, Paul Schechter, Augustus Oemler Jr and Stephen Shectman during a survey of galactic redshifts, the Bootes void is one of the first large voids discovered and is therefore the most famous. Voids of this size are often referred to as supervoids.
The Bootes vacuum hosts regions that probably have the lowest particle densities in the entire observable universe. Although the average particle density in the universe is estimated to be around one particle per cubic foot, the central regions of the Bootes vacuum likely have particle densities several times lower than that. It is not known how much dark matter exists within the vacuum, but it would be particularly difficult to locate it, due to the lack of nearby galaxies whose gravitational behavior must be studied to infer their existence.
The Bootes vacuum is so large that Greg Aldering, an astronomer currently at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, once observed: “If the Milky Way had been at the center of the Bootes vacuum, we wouldn’t have known there were other galaxies until the 1990s. 1960. If there were intelligent species in the few galaxies located near the center of the void, they would have quite a job trying to engage in intergalactic colonization. These few galaxies are suspected to exist within the void as a kind of “wall of bubbles”, resulting from the merger of two smaller voids.
The size of the Bootes void is larger than predicted by our current understanding of galaxy formation and large-scale structure in the universe, creating some mystery. The Bootes vacuum is thought to have “set” lower since the instant of the Big Bang, existing as a tiny point of diminished density in a “primordial atom” of incredible mass that exploded to give rise to our universe. Although the galaxies can be clearly seen in the direction of the sky where the Bootes void is located, all of these galaxies have been found to be either relatively close to us or relatively distant, with the large gap in between being the void.
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