SUPERVOID

A vast, low density region of space spanning 1.8 billion light-years could help explain why the universe is so cold in this particular area. This cosmological wonder called the supervoid is an immense stretch of relative emptiness. The supervoid has about twenty percent less cosmic material- galaxies, dust and the like- than our part of the universe or any other area with typical density. Although it's not exactly a void, since we find it is not entirely empty. But when juxtaposed against other chunks of space, the supervoid appears a frigid wasteland. What we see is an incredibly massive cosmological hole. It's existence only emerged thanks to a targeted astronomical survey, which confirmed that around 10,000 galaxies were "missing" from the part of the sky it resides in. Scientists were actually searching for an explanation for an unusually cool area of the universe. This area now known as the Cold Spot was discovered ten years ago. The latest study suggests that the Cold Spot can be partly explained by the supervoid itself, which drains energy from light traveling through it thus reducing the overall temperature. Scientists comment it is unprecedented given how evenly distributed the universe is at this spatial scale. Now they have to determine how the supervoid itself formed. The supervoid can only account for about ten percent of the Cold Spot temperature drop. This partial explanation could point to the existence of "exotic physics" that scientists don't yet know about.