Well it seems there is a vast region of outer space, 1 billion light-years in diameter, in which no matter exists. There are similar regions, but this is the largest one.
The aforementioned figure means that one could travel at the speed of light for one billion years, and never encounter any matter aside from your own space ship!!!!
Or, since it is impossible for an object to accelerate to exactly the speed of light, you could go 99.99999999999% the speed of light.
There is a cold area in that direction in the Cosmic Microwave Background -- the radiation signal left over from the Big Bang. Cold in this case means lower frequency than the rest of the CMB.
So, astronomers pointed the Very Large Array of radio telescopes in that area and found..."nothing"!!! No matter is detected in that area!
Very odd that there would be such a big area and literally no matter to be found!!!
here is a nasa page on it
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070827.html
nasa page
and here is a New Scientist article on it
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12546-new-void-in-space-is-of-unprecedented-scale.html
New Scientist article
You know what this reminds me of? The Never Ending Story, where the alternate world was being eaten by "nothing" and one character said "is it a hole?" and the other said "no, a hole would be something". lol!!!
Later...
The aforementioned figure means that one could travel at the speed of light for one billion years, and never encounter any matter aside from your own space ship!!!!
Or, since it is impossible for an object to accelerate to exactly the speed of light, you could go 99.99999999999% the speed of light.
There is a cold area in that direction in the Cosmic Microwave Background -- the radiation signal left over from the Big Bang. Cold in this case means lower frequency than the rest of the CMB.
So, astronomers pointed the Very Large Array of radio telescopes in that area and found..."nothing"!!! No matter is detected in that area!
Very odd that there would be such a big area and literally no matter to be found!!!
here is a nasa page on it
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070827.html
nasa page
and here is a New Scientist article on it
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12546-new-void-in-space-is-of-unprecedented-scale.html
New Scientist article
You know what this reminds me of? The Never Ending Story, where the alternate world was being eaten by "nothing" and one character said "is it a hole?" and the other said "no, a hole would be something". lol!!!
Later...