Fear.
It is an intrinsic part of life. It is a mechanism that enables us to survive and avoid potential dangers.
The fear of heights, arachnophobia, megalophobia, and various other fears and phobias can be explained logically as being remnants of our early evolution. They still do their job today, though in some instances it doesn’t do us any good.
We pride ourselves in being able to explain everything, being able to reason ourselves out of the fear of the unknown.
“We will find out more one day” we say to ourselves.
But the thing is, almost all of our fears are about “something”. Of course, it is “something”, you say to yourself… “I fear nothing” is a common catchphrase for many heroes in our stories. But if you stop and think for a moment, ruminate on it.
Nothing.
We can’t explain it, we fear nothingness, and we associate it with death. But we do not know what comes after death, what happens once all life functions cease, once the brain stops shooting out electrical impulses when our thoughts and our memories simply…vanish.
I don’t think I need to continue, you thought about it most likely yourself. I needed to tell you this for the start for you to better understand what I am about to tell you.
It is irrelevant who found it, it’ll make no difference in the end. The person who first found out the truth about the Great Void is… no longer with us.
Let me begin with a brief explanation for those who are not familiar with the Great void.
There is a point in space where there is an almost complete absence of stars. I say almost because we did detect only a few stars within them.
Though, looking at it better, those were merely optical illusions…
Anyways, the Great Void also known as Bootes Void is one of three known “Super Voids” in the universe, most likely more. Those which have been observed are the aforementioned Bootes Void, the CMB Cold spot, and the simply named “Giant Void”.
There are many theories to explain their formation, such as baryon acoustic oscillations during the Big Bang. In short, those oscillations are simply collapses of mass followed by implosions of compressed baryonic matter. Baryons are composite subatomic particles with an odd number of valence quarks… I know most of you might not know what I am talking about, let’s just say that is the leading theory and explanation for them.
And that theory still stands for most of those voids. But there has been a shift in the Bootes void.
Let me first elaborate on what we have found about the Bootes Void in the last two years of research. That research isn’t publicly available so don’t try to find it, you won’t. Not even on the Deep Web, believe me.
But I digress, if you Google Bootes Void you’ll probably see a big black amorphous blotch among a bunch of stars. That isn’t the Bootes Void, that is Barnard 68. It is a molecular cloud around 500 light-years from our galaxy. Imagine it is like a cloud blocking out the sun, in this stars. And the cloud is 0.25 light-years in radius.
But Bootes Void is much, much bigger than that simple nebula. It is 330 million light-years in diameter. To put that into perspective that is 0.27% of the observable universe.
0.27% of the observable universe is nothing. Just nothing. That thing is 700 million light-years from Earth.
I’ve said there had been stars found inside it, but we have been wrong. Were not so sure for the other Super Voids but we are goddamn sure for Bootes Void.
It is like a… Titanic black hole. It bends light around itself, and what we see are simply stars behind it or beside it.
But it isn’t a black hole.
The thing started expanding two years ago. But of course, it wasn’t two years ago. It was probably 700 million years ago. But that theory went down the drain because of a simple calculation… A calculation which I assure you we did a thousand times at this point. And it always came back with the same result. The thing is expanding faster than light, significantly faster. At our best estimates, it is about ten times the speed of light.
This means that it would take about 70 million years to reach us give or take. And we have to put into consideration the expansion of the universe and everything else…
But of course, our only way of observing it is by the stars that it had already absorbed, and those are 700 million light-years away from us. We managed to calculate the speed of the Void by the rate at which the stars started disappearing.
The thing is we don’t know where it is now. How large is it, because the light of the stars it had absorbed at this point hasn’t been put out yet, completely. Their light… Dead light, is still shining.
And since the thing is expanding faster than the speed of light, and due to the abrupt start of said expansion… We threw out everything we knew about physics out the window. We don’t know where it is, whether it stopped, whether it sped up or slowed down… We don’t know.
We are sitting ducks because the light isn’t simply coming here fast enough for us to observe it in real-time.
For all I know it can come here the moment I post this. It can come tomorrow, next year, or in a century… In a billion years for all I know.
If it is anything like a false vacuum. Our demise will come like an assassin in the night. Without warning, we will simply cease to exist.
Maybe there is something inside of it. But that something is utterly alien to us. There are theories that a false vacuum completely rewrites the laws of physics. It wipes the slate and starts anew while devouring the existing universe.
Hell… What am I talking about I don’t know if that thing is a false vacuum at all… I don’t what it is, it doesn’t abide by the simple law that is the speed of light.
Maybe our universe is a false vacuum that is devouring a universe completely alien to us. Maybe this is just the way it is…
Death will be swift, I know that. There will be nothing, everything we do is for nothing. Because I know it will arrive. Eventually. Inevitably.
And we will never know.