Our universe is not uniform. Its matter is clumped up in various places, with some regions less dense than others. And it seems like we just might be in one of those places, a vast cosmic void.
A new study was presented today at the 230th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Texas suggesting as much. It provides new evidence that our region of space has far fewer galaxies, stars, and planets than others. Two papers on the findings have been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. [...]
According to the findings, the spherical void we reside in is seven times larger than the average void, spanning a huge 1 billion light-years. Named KBC after its discoverers (Keenan, Barger, and Cowie) in 2013, it is the largest void we’ve ever found.
That’s not to say it definitely exists, just that it seems plausible. Most of the evidence comes from discrepancies in the expansion of the universe on a local scale and on a cosmic scale. The former comes from supernova explosions in our vicinity, the latter from photons originating from the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
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