This Is the Scariest Place in The Universe

The vast majority of the cosmos is voids. Gigantic, unfathomably large  spaces of empty nothingness. Bubbles of eternal night, stretching  hundreds of millions of light-years, almost entirely devoid of  galaxies, stars, or light. The loneliest places in existence. Voids are not just the absence of stuff but  weird worlds of darkness that are growing, drifting, colliding and merging with  each other – Inside them space itself is stretched violently and it's  almost impossible to enter them. Simply put: voids are weird and scary. But they sculpt the entire universe  and may ultimately decide its fate. Today we know of over 8,000 voids and  supervoids, and we keep discovering more. No matter how large a cluster or  supercluster of galaxies gets, there always seems to be  an even larger void nearby. Let’s jump off the cosmic cliff and drop  into the heart of cosmic nothingness. The Loneliest Place in the Universe You are zooming away from Earth, at  thousands of times the speed of light, leaving our solar system and  our solar neighborhood behind. Now we see the entire Milky Way  with its 200 billion stars and dozens of dwarf galaxies zipping around it. 2.5 million light-years away on a collision course is giant Andromeda and its own  swarm of satellite galaxies. We are now moving a million times faster than the  speed of light, seeing the local group of over 50 galaxies woven together by gravity, rivers of  gas, and invisible scaffolds of dark matter. This is our pocket of the universe, 10 million  light years across, no human will ever leave it. Except for you apparently. As we zoom away even faster  we see the Virgo Supercluster, a colossal wall of more than 2, 000 galaxies  spread over roughly 100 million light-years. Careful now, you are right on the edge  of the cosmic cliff where the true, deep darkness begins: the Local Void – a gigantic,  empty bubble 200 million light-years across. If it was a bright thing  and not absolute darkness, it would fill 40% of the  night sky we see from earth. All around us are dozens of other superclusters and gigantic voids filled  with suffocating emptiness. You are now traveling towards the greatest and emptiest nothing in existence – right  into the center of the Boötes Supervoid. A cosmic desert around 300  million light-years wide. So gigantic it should contain  thousands of galaxies. But instead, what do you see?