Gaping hole found in universe
UNITED STATES: A giant hole in the Universe is devoid of galaxies,
stars and even lacks dark matter, astronomers said on Thursday.
The team at the University of Minnesota said the void is nearly a
billion light-years across and they have no idea why it is there.
“Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even
expected to find one this size,” said astronomy professor Lawrence
Rudnick.
Writing in the Astrophysical Journal, Rudnick and colleagues Shea
Brown and Liliya Williams said they were examining a cold spot using the
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite, and found the giant
hole.
“We already knew there was something different about this spot in the
sky,” Rudnick said. The region stood out as being colder in a survey of
the Cosmic Microwave Background — the faint radio buzz left over from
the Big Bang that gave birth to the Universe.
“What we’ve found is not normal, based on either observational
studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the
Universe,” Williams said in a statement.
The astronomers said the region even appeared to lack dark matter,
which cannot be seen directly but is usually detected by measuring
gravitational forces.
The void is in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus,
southwest of Orion.
Washington, Friday, Reuters
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