(ORDO NEWS) — Astronomer Robert Kirchner in 1981, together with his colleagues, was creating a special three-dimensional map of the Universe. It was then that they noticed something unusual. It turned out to be a void in which galaxies were almost completely absent.
It is a spherical region in outer space, which is located at a distance of almost 700 million light years from our planet. The diameter of this area at the same time reaches 330 million light years. If we take into account that the diameter of our galaxy does not exceed 100 thousand light years, then the Milky Way would fit in this void 3300 times. This area of space was called “Void Bootes”, because, presumably, it is located in the constellation Bootes. But how exactly did its formation take place?
At the very beginning, the void was called “Great Nothing”, but after a while it was renamed, because from our planet it seems that it is located right in the constellation Bootes. Since the time that this area of outer space was discovered, experts have managed to create a lot of detailed maps of the Universe.
They also managed to establish that galaxies in space are located in the form of a huge cobweb. Many of them are located in rather long filaments or peculiar structures that extend over great distances through outer space. When the filaments intersect with each other, then in this way there are regions where a fairly high concentration of galaxies is observed. It is customary to call them clusters.
Between the filaments there are large voids, in which galaxies are almost completely absent. Experts suggest that approximately 80% of the visible universe is made up of just such voids. They can also be called voids. Most of the sites are 30-300 million light-years in diameter.
The Bootes Void represents the largest void in the universe. Some experts dubbed her the super-hero. Presumably, it arose as a result of the merging of several small voids among themselves.
Initially, in the Universe, matter was collected together and represented a homogeneous substance with a sufficiently high density index. Over time, various kinds of quantum fluctuations could lead to the fact that matter began to be distributed.
As a result, certain parts of the Universe became denser, and their gravitational influence increased significantly. They began to actively attract matter from other parts of the cosmos. At the same time, the Universe continued to expand, small clumps of matter turned into galaxies, and large ones – into voids.
An international team of experts, led by experts from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, have recorded an enormous structure in the Milky Way. She got the name “Maggie”.
The structure is a thread of atomic hydrogen. It is the largest and longest structure ever observed by experts in the Milky Way. “Maggie” is almost 3,900 light years in length, and the width of the filament at the same time fluctuates within 130 light years.
The study was led by Jonas Syed. The specialists used the information and new data that were obtained using the VLA radio astronomy observatory named after Karl Jansky, which is located in the United States. With their help, they wanted to get answers to a number of important questions.
For example, how molecular-type clouds are formed, how atomic hydrogen is converted into its molecular form, as well as many other questions that are related to star formation.
It is worth noting that this hydrogen filament received this name thanks to Soler. The scientist gave her the “name” Rio Magdalena. This was the name of the river that flowed in Colombia, where the specialist was born. In English, this name sounds like Maggie or Margaret.
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