Scientists Find a Much Bigger Cosmic Void

It may seem a little strange but scientists have confirmed an area of space that contains - wait for it - nothing. Most people may not be taken aback by the idea that scientists have found nothing and people who claim to practice Creation Science will probably advance the idea that biologists who have bought into the theory of evolution have actually found nothing for years, the "nothing" they found does not mean a lack of data. They have quite literally found nothing, except a large black area of space.

The debate over whether some sort of substance existed in Outer Space which at the time was called ether existed for a long time. The debate was eventually settled by Albert Einstein in the twentieth century. The vacuum, in the direction of the Eriadnus constellation was found by radio telescopes conducting a survey of that region of the sky made at radio wavelengths.

The gaps between galaxies are known to be huge and the distances do not easily fit into the human imagination. The astronomers working out of the US National Radio's observatory's VLA (Very Large array) will announce the findings of the "cosmic void" in the upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The findings of the cosmic void by the US astronomers may give Buddhist theologians and followers something to try to imitated while reaching for emptiness with their meditations, but the distance of the cosmic void is much larger that what might take place inside the head of the human being. The vacuum of this area of space would take roughly a billion years to cross while traveling at the speed of light. By comparison, it only takes four light to reach the earth from the nearest star.

While dark matter may make up the largest physical component of the universe, if it can be proven to exist by anything other than circumstantial evidence, dark energy may is believed to be responsible for the continued expansion of the universe. The survey results give scientists a model to study this dark energy in a convincing manner. The cosmic void was found by measuring microwaves which cause the average background temperature of the universe to be about three degrees above absolute zero in the region. The microwaves are the remnants of light that formed approximately 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It is estimated it took this long for hydrogen atoms to form. Before this, matter and energy would have existed together and the universe could have been described as "opaque."

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6962185.stm