Cosmic Voids May Contain the Universe’s Best Secrets
Key takeaways
- She adds that because there’s less interference from matter, there’s a “high signal-to-noise” ratio in terms of what researchers can observe.
- The advent of new telescopes and advanced simulations has supercharged this field, inspiring a growing community of scientists worldwide to specialize in voids as unique cosmological laboratories.
- For places defined by sparseness, voids are becoming cosmological heavyweights, where the laws of physics can be observed with unusual clarity.
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A composite image of Stephan's Quintet (HCG 92) in the Pegasus constellation.Photograph: NASA/Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Nature abhors a vacuum, so the saying goes, but nobody told the universe. Space is filled with cosmic voids—vast regions mostly free of matter that have opened between dense threads of material that make up a cosmic web.
Far from being vacant backwaters with little to study, these voids may hold solutions to some of the most persistent cosmic mysteries, such as the behavior of gravity, the nature of dark energy, and the so-called Hubble tension, an observational mismatch in the expansion rate of the universe that has caused astronomers’ headaches for years.
“With voids, we have the power to tackle most of the interesting cosmological riddles,” says Alice Pisani, a research professor in cosmology working at the Centre for Particle Physics in Marseille (CPPM) of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. She adds that because there’s less interference from matter, there’s a “high signal-to-noise” ratio in terms of what researchers can observe.