This Is the Scariest Place in The Universe

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• superclusters
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Transcript: 87 sentences

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1. 0:02 The vast majority of the cosmos is voids.
2. 0:06 Gigantic, unfathomably large spaces of empty nothingness.
3. 0:10 Bubbles of eternal night, stretching hundreds of millions of light-years, almost entirely devoid of galaxies, stars, or light.
4. 0:20 The loneliest places in existence.
5. 0:24 Voids are not just the absence of stuff but weird worlds of darkness that are growing, drifting, colliding and merging with each other - Inside them space itself
6. 0:35 is stretched violently and it's almost impossible to enter them.
7. 0:40 Simply put: voids are weird and scary.
8. 0:44 But they sculpt the entire universe and may ultimately decide its fate.
9. 0:50 Today we know of over 8,000 voids and supervoids, and we keep discovering more.
10. 0:56 No matter how large a cluster or supercluster of galaxies gets, there always seems to be an even larger void nearby.
11. 1:04 Let’s jump off the cosmic cliff and drop into the heart of cosmic nothingness.
12. 1:12 The Loneliest Place in the Universe You are zooming away from Earth, at thousands of times the speed of light, leaving our solar system and our solar neighborhood behind.
13. 1:24 Now we see the entire Milky Way with its 200 billion stars and dozens of dwarf galaxies zipping around it.
14. 1:31 2.5 million light-years away on a collision course is giant Andromeda and its own swarm of satellite galaxies.
15. 1:39 We are now moving a million times faster than the speed of light, seeing the local group of over 50
16. 1:45 galaxies woven together by gravity, rivers of gas, and invisible scaffolds of dark matter.
17. 1:53 This is our pocket of the universe, 10 million light years across, no human will ever leave it.
18. 2:00 Except for you apparently.
19. 2:03 As we zoom away even faster we see the Virgo Supercluster, a colossal wall of more than 2,000 galaxies spread over roughly 100 million light-years.
20. 2:14 Careful now, you are right on the edge of the cosmic cliff where the true,
21. 2:18 deep darkness begins: the Local Void - a gigantic, empty bubble 200 million light-years across.
22. 2:26 If it was a bright thing and not absolute darkness, it would fill 40% of the night sky we see from earth.
23. 2:33 All around us are dozens of other superclusters and gigantic voids filled with suffocating emptiness.
24. 2:41 You are now traveling towards the greatest and emptiest nothing in existence - right into the center of the Boötes Supervoid.
25. 2:50 A cosmic desert around 300 million light-years wide.
26. 2:55 So gigantic it should contain thousands of galaxies.
27. 2:59 But instead, what do you see?
28. 3:02 You are surrounded by perfect darkness, the most absolute blackness the human mind can conceive.
29. 3:10 There is no up or down.
30. 3:11 No motion.
31. 3:12 Nothing to orient yourself.
32. 3:15 There is not a single sign that the outside universe even exists.
33. 3:19 It’s an inescapable prison.
34. 3:21 And this isn’t some exotic corner of the cosmos.
35. 3:24 This is how the vast majority of the universe feels to human eyes.
36. 3:28 Just silent blackness without any movement.
37. 3:31 Everywhere.
38. 3:32 Forever.
39. 3:35 Although there is something mysterious hiding in the dark - faint tendrils of dark matter, penetrating into the void like cosmic lichen.
40. 3:44 A miniature echo of the much larger forest of dark matter filaments that forms the scaffold of galaxies and galaxy clusters outside the void.
41. 3:53 And at their tips we find faint blueish specs in the ocean of darkness: Void galaxies, lonely fireflies unable to light up the night.
42. 4:03 The rarest galaxies we know, very isolated, very lonely.
43. 4:09 A Universe of Bubbles Before we could look deep into space, astronomers thought we lived in a uniform cosmos with galaxies spread out evenly.
44. 4:19 But instead, we found that galaxies, cosmic gas and dark matter were arranged into a vast cosmic web.
45. 4:26 A recurring pattern of sheets and filaments, organized around enormous empty gaps, meeting at dense knots with galaxy clusters and super clusters.
46. 4:36 But this structure is not static, it just seems to be because the distances between galaxies are so incredibly vast.
47. 4:43 In reality galaxies shoot through space at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour.
48. 4:49 They are on collision courses, orbiting each other, moving towards the center of larger galaxy clusters millions of light years away.
49. 4:57 But they always seem to stick to the rims of voids like reflections of light on soap bubbles - which is kind of weird.
50. 5:04 If they are this dynamic, shouldn’t a galaxy shoot into a void occasionally?
51. 5:09 Well voids are actually extremely hard to enter for galaxies from the outside - at least naturally - because gravity becomes weird at their edges and even weirder deeper inside them.
52. 5:20 If you didn't know better, you might think voids spit out anything trying to get inside, pushing galaxies to the edge.
53. 5:27 The way gravity works is that everything with mass in the universe attracts every other thing with mass.
54. 5:33 And since there is almost no mass inside, the cosmic web of galaxy super clusters on their edges are pulling things out of voids.
55. 5:41 The emptier a void is, the harder gravity is pulling on what remains.
56. 5:46 It's really like a tug of war where one side isn’t even trying.
57. 5:50 Over time voids are really only getting even emptier and the walls and knots around them denser and brighter.
58. 5:58 Would it be hard to fly into a cosmic void with a spaceship?
59. 6:02 Well not technically, the hardest part is escaping the gravity of your home galaxy.
60. 6:08 It also doesn’t make much sense because…
61. 6:10 what exactly do you want to visit inside a void?
62. 6:12 It makes sense to fly into a void if you want to hide.
63. 6:16 Like really, really hide.
64. 6:19 But what cosmic horror would be scary enough for a civilization to try to escape into a cosmic void?
65. 6:26 Galaxies in the crowded cluster regions like our milky way are very active, since its neighbours’ gravity tugs and pulls at it, they collide and merge.
66. 6:35 Void galaxies are so isolated that they are aging in slow motion.
67. 6:40 They tend to be smaller, bluer and full of gas, birthing new stars slower and calmer.
68. 6:47 So void galaxies could be the last places that will stay habitable in our dying universe.
69. 6:53 The last star in the universe will likely be born here.
70. 6:57 So maybe in a 100 trillion years or so a desperate alien race will embark on an impossible journey to stretch their existence just a bit longer inside a void galaxy.
71. 7:09 There is one more thing that makes voids unique places: Dark Energy.
72. 7:13 The mysterious force that most scientists think is accelerating the expansion of the universe and will ultimately cause its demise.
73. 7:21 We can’t see dark energy do anything inside our galaxy or inside clusters because there is too much stuff pulling things together via gravity - but we can see its effects inside voids.
74. 7:33 Here dark energy blows up the bubbles of nothing.
75. 7:37 This is where the acceleration of cosmic expansion becomes visible.
76. 7:42 As voids are getting larger and larger, they are breaking the structure of the universe, the beautiful galaxy filaments are slowly being ripped apart.
77. 7:52 As the emptiness encroaches, walls of thousands of galaxies are thinned out and pulled towards the edges - attracted by much denser regions at the margins,
78. 8:02 giving space to the emptiness of two void bubbles becoming one.
79. 8:07 In the far, far future supervoids will take over the observable universe.
80. 8:12 Crushing clusters, and expanding further and further, until the entire observable universe is nothing more than a gigantic void of nothingness.
81. 8:23 The loneliest place in existence.
82. 8:28 Let’s head back to Earth.
83. 8:29 When we land, please exit through the gift shop and pick up a few souvenirs.
84. 8:34 We created this latest Space Souvenir Drop for all of you who have been travelling with us for so many years now.
85. 8:40 While you’re there, take a look around, you might discover a unique product dedicated to your favorite science topic.
86. 8:46 Everything is created with lots of care by our team of scientists and designers to inspire you and spark your curiosity.
87. 8:53 Thank you for traveling with kurzgesagt space tours.

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