The immense hole in the universe requires explanation

"I am appalled by the eternal silence of these spaces" - Blaise Pascal these words often recall astronauts and astronomers. But recently astrophysicists terrified silence is not so much how much emptiness, complete emptiness. A huge proportion of the space in the length of a billion light years away has no completed. Although can contain many millions of galaxies ... Where all gone? !

Physicists had long known that the matter in space is very unevenly distributed. Usually, talk of the "rough" distribution of matter in space. As for the radiation-these are the so-called relict radiation, it is distributed far more regularly, but there are some notable variations.

The most glaring anomalies such scientists discovered in the cards relict radiation, calling them cold spots. A number of astronomers identified, data processing apparatus Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe (WMAP), launched specifically to survey the background.

Cosmic microwave background radiation is a little "residual" microwave radiation after the Big Bang, which, according to official science, started the universe (some, however, believe this event merely Bum). Therefore, the study neregulyarnostey radiation and so interesting that allows something to learn about the incident in the very first century and millennium.

These images in the radio show the same square on the side of the sky about 25 degrees. Photographs taken at different wavelengths apparatus WMAP (left) and radio telescopes Very Large Array - VLA (right) (illustration Rudnick et al. , NRAO / AUI / NSF, NASA).

These images in the radio show the same square on the side of the sky about 25 degrees. Photographs taken at different wavelengths apparatus WMAP (left) and the Very Large Array radio telescopes - VLA (right) (illustration Rudnick et al. , NRAO / AUI / NSF, NASA).

The most famous part of the sky where radiation severely weakened, it is considered a so-called "cold spots WMAP" WMAP Cold Spot, located in the constellation Eridani. His research and became professor Lawrence Rudnick (Lawrence Rudnick) from the University of Minnesota (University of Minnesota), along with its employees.

They did not expect to find in this spot anything special, but what they found there, put them in shock. What is it? Strangely enough, nothing, just nothing. Scientists have not been able to find in this area or space galaxies or gas.

At first glance, this claim is not particularly impressive. It is the current researchers, the majority of the substances available for observing the universe, because it is composed largely of dark matter. So far, the only possibility is to find her - on gravitational effects on ordinary matter and electromagnetic radiation.

Dark Matter pieces strange : scientists do not know what it is, but they know its basic properties. Recently revealed that the substance can behave very strangely, and all the same to her whereabouts no problem.

But within WMAP Cold Spot Rudnick, the group did not even find it. This means that the region is nothing. Generally.

This is a huge cavity 6-10 billion light years away. Its size simply stunning : the researchers, it has a diameter of about a billion light years! Interesting to compare this with a diameter of our galaxy, which is classified as a giant, "only" one hundred thousand light years.

The size of the void impressive even in comparison with the most optimistic assessment of the size of the universe.

More on the study of the "cold spots" and posed for her hiatus will soon be eligible to learn from the article that will appear in astrophysics journal (Astrophysical Journal). Preprint- version of the publication is available on the server arXiv.org.

Astronomers still do not know why there is such a "failure". But about a mechanism that supports it, they already have conjecture.

Rather, the problem is in a dark energy. According to the astronomers, it is in effect megamasshtabah and opposite gravity : it rastalkivaet substance in all directions. This leads to different effects, and one of the most notable is the expansion of the universe.

Is that the dark energy, for unclear reasons, is rampant within the huge volume, which is available to us in the form of WMAP Cold Spot, "evicting" away all substance. As astronomers explain, microwave background photons, passing through the zone, the rich dark energy, lose its energies. As a result, the area on the map of microwave radiation is a little more cold.

In general, Aristotle, asserting that nature abhors a vacuum, again proved wrong. The fact that the idea was an ancient philosopher incorrect, scientists have long known, but no one could imagine that this problem can be so monstrous scale.