Boötes Void, also known as the Shepherd’s Void, discovered by Robert Kishner and his team in 1981 and located 700 million light-years from Earth, is one of the voids in intergalactic space. But what distinguishes it from other spaces is its gigantic dimensions. When traveling between galaxies in the universe, one might expect not to travel very far when viewed on a cosmic scale. For example, in the 12 million light-years radius around our galaxy, there are 196 galaxies discovered to date, including Andromeda.
The Boötes Void covers an immense area with a diameter of 350 million light years.
Therefore, someone who looks at the universe from within this void experiences a desolate universe buried in darkness, unlike the luminous universe we observe. For a better understanding of the subject, it would be useful to mention a quote by the famous astronomer Greg Aldering about Boötes:
“If our galaxy were located in the middle of the Boötes Void, we would have thought that ours was the only galaxy in the universe as a result of our observations until the 1960s”.
The Boötes Void is so large in volume that it occupies an area of 3 per thousandth of the universe alone.
So is there nothing in this space? In fact, right after the first discovery, 8 galaxies scattered in the vacuum were discovered. Later that number increased to 60. However, this number is extremely small for such a large area. Considering that the number of galaxies that should exist in an area of this size under normal conditions should be over 10 thousand, this situation can be understood more clearly. Moreover, most of the discovered galaxies are located at the far ends of the vacuum. So in the central areas, there is nothing that we can see.
Besides the desolation, the size of Boötes puzzles scientists. Because, considering the age of the universe, although it is considered normal to form gaps between galaxy clusters as a result of the galaxies approaching each other due to the gravitational forces they apply, it does not seem possible for the diameters of these gaps to exceed 10-20 million light years.
How Boötes reached a diameter of 350 million light years, therefore, is among the mysteries waiting to be answered.
In addition to some scientific theories on this subject, there are also extreme conspiracy theories.
According to one of the stronger theories in the light of scientific data, Boötes may actually have been formed as a result of the collision of two voids. The shapes of the few galaxies in Boötes appear to be compatible with the structure that would result from this collision.
According to conspiracy theorists, a Type-3 civilization on the Kardashev Scale has managed to effectively use the stars and even galaxies here in terms of energy production. Moreover, this civilization can mislead us as if we are looking into a completely dark area, thanks to a technology it has developed to hide from other possible civilizations.
Although this theory, which takes into account the age of the universe and the Kardashev Scale, is possible, it has not found a place in the literature.
Apart from theory, one of the most important aspects of vacuum is that it is not only devoid of large structures such as stars or galaxies, but is also a perfect example of vacuum because it is extremely poor in particles. For this reason, particles such as neutrinos entering from one side of the gap can exit from the other side of the gap unchanged after hundreds of millions of years without even the slightest interaction. This makes it a kind of time capsule-like structure.
Sources: Gizmodo, NewScientist, Nautilus, Atlas of the Universe
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