Artist's conception of the Giant Void and thefilamentsand walls that surround it. The internal clusters can also be appreciated (credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi).
TheGiant Void(also known as theGiant Void in NGH,Canes Venatici Supervoid,andAR-Lp 36) is an extremely large region of space with an underdensity of galaxies and located in theconstellationCanes Venatici.It is the second-largest-confirmedvoidto date, with an estimated diameter of 300 to 400Mpc(1 to 1.3 billionlight-years)[1]and its centre is approximately 1.5 billion light-years away (z= 0.116).[1]It was discovered in 1988,[2]and was the largest void in the Northern Galactic Hemisphere,[1]and possibly the second-largest ever detected. Even the hypothesized "Eridanus Supervoid" corresponding to the location of theWMAP cold spotis dwarfed by this void, although the Giant Void does not correspond to any significant cooling to thecosmic microwave background.
Inside this vast void there are 17galaxy clusters,concentrated in a spherically shaped region 50 Mpc in diameter.[1]Studies of the motion of these clusters show that they have no interaction to each other, meaning the density of the clusters is very low resulting in weakgravitational interaction.[1]The void's location in the sky is close to theBoötes Void.
In a series of papers published between 2004 and 2006, cosmologist and theoretical physicistLaura Mersini-Houghtonpresented a theory that the universe arose from amultiverse,and made a series of testable predictions which included the existence of the Giant Void.[3][4]
