Anna Verdon
There is so much we still don’t know about space but scientists looking at dark voids in the universe have revealed that they think they could be causing ‘dark energy’.
These voids are one of the largest features of the cosmos and can often measure in at hundreds of millions of light-years wide.
Some may even span several billions of light-years in width – which is hard to get your head around.
Many people often view these voids as ‘holes’ in space and claim they are an example of truly empty space without stars, galaxies, plasma, gas, dust or black holes.
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Scientifically though, this isn’t true.
Boffins have instead highlighted that these cosmic voids are usually ginormous clouds of gas, Forbes reports.
However, according to a new paper highlighted by Live Science which is due to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal, these cosmic voids could be the source of dark energy.
And it’s this energy which scientists say could be flinging the universe apart by causing it to expand faster and faster.
The mysterious force causing the universe to act in this way is something that has been puzzling astrophysicists for years.
Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute in New York City, explained what this new research means to Live Science.
Sutter explained: “What do the voids have to do with dark energy? For one thing, the effects of accelerated expansion aren't felt inside of star systems or galaxies; there, the gravitational attraction of matter is more than strong enough to completely overwhelm it. For example, neither our own solar system nor the Milky Way is getting bigger because of dark energy. But because the voids are almost completely empty, they feel the effects of dark energy far more readily.”
But now, in this new paper, researchers claim that dark energy isn’t just found in the voids, but it’s caused by them.
They say that the enormous structures have grown over time.
While billions of years ago matter in space was spread out pretty evenly, places that had a little more started to attract more matter into it. This continued until the accumulated matter formed galaxies, groups and clusters.
However, this meant that these voids were being left empty and enlarging.
Sutter explains: “As voids grow, the walls of galaxies between them steadily thin out and eventually dissolve, allowing voids to merge.
“In the next few billion years, the voids will end up dissolving the cosmic web, forcing all matter into isolated clumps separated by hundreds of millions of light-years of emptiness.”
As this happens, it leads to an accelerated expansion – which matches the estimates of dark energy.
While more research needs to be carried out in this area to test this theory, it’s certainly an interesting idea.