Video yDAAlojz8NU

[00:01] The vast majority of the cosmos is void. Gigantic, unfathomably large spaces of empty nothingness. Bubbles of eternal light, stretching hundreds of millions of light years,

[00:15] almost entirely devoid of galaxies, stars or light. The loneliest cases in existence. Voids are not just the absence of stuff, but weird worlds of darkness that are growing, drifting, colliding and merging with each other.

[00:33] Inside them, space itself is stretched violently, and it's almost impossible to enter them. Simply put, voids are weird and scary, but they stop the entire universe and may ultimately decide its fate.

[00:49] Today, we know of over 8,000 voids and supervoids, and we keep discovering more. No matter how large a cluster or supercluster of galaxies get, there always seems to be an even larger void nearby.

[01:04] Let's jump off the cosmic cliff and drop into the heart of cosmic nothingness. The loneliest place in the universe.

[01:16] You're zooming away from Earth at thousands of times the speed of life, leaving our solar system and our solar neighbourhood behind. Now we see the entire Milky Way with its 200 billion stars and dozens of dwarf galaxies

[01:29] zipping around it. Two and a half million light-years away on the collision course is giant Andromeda and its own swarm of satellite galaxies. We're now moving a million times faster from the speed of light, seeing the local group

[01:44] of over 50 galaxies woven together by gravity, rivers of gas, and invisible scaffolds of dark matter. This is our pocket of the universe, 10 million light-years across.

[01:57] No human will ever leave it, except for you, apparently. 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.

[02:13] Careful now you right on the edge of the cosmic cliff where the true deep darkness begins The local void a gigantic empty bubble 200 million light years across

[02:26] If it was a bright thing and not absolute darkness, it would fill 40% of the night sky we see from Earth. All around us are dozens of such superpowers and gigantic voids filled with suffocating emptiness.

[02:39] You're now travelling towards the greatest and emptiest nothing in existence, right into the centre of the Volotid Zivavoid, a cosmic desert around 300 million light years wide.

[02:54] So gigantic it should contain thousands of galaxies, but instead, what do you see? You're surrounded by perfect darkness, the most absolute blackness the human mind can

[03:07] can conceive. There is no up or down, no motion, nothing to orient yourself. There's not a single sign that the outside universe even exists. It's an inescapable prison, and this isn't some exotic

[03:22] corner of the cosmos. This is how the vast majority of the universe feels to human eyes. Just silent blackness, without any movement, everywhere, forever. Although there is something mysterious hiding in the dark, faint tendrils of dark matter penetrating into the void like cosmic lycan.

[03:44] A miniature echo is a much larger forest of dark matter elements that forms the scaffold of galaxies and galaxy clusters outside the void. And at their tips, we find faint bluish specks in the ocean of darkness.

[03:58] Void galaxies, lonely fireflies, unable to light up the night. The rarest galaxies we know, very isolated, very lonely. The Universe of Bubbles

[04:10] Before we could look deep into space, astronomers thought we lived in a uniform cosmos with galaxies spread out evenly. But instead, we found that galaxies, cosmic gas and dark matter were arranged into a vast cosmic web.

[04:26] A recurring pattern of sheets and filament organized around enormous empty gap, meeting at dense knots with galaxy clusters and superclusters But this structure is not static It just seems to be because the distances between galaxies are so incredibly vast

[04:43] In reality, galaxies shoot through space at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour. They're on collision courses, orbiting each other, moving towards the center of larger galaxy clusters millions of light days away.

[04:56] But they always seem to stick to the rims of voids like reflections of light on float bubbles Which is kind of weird If they're this dynamic, should the galaxy shoot into a void occasionally?

[05:09] 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 If you didn't know better, you might think voids spit out anything trying to get inside

[05:24] pushing galaxies to the edge. The way gravity works is that everything with mass in the universe attracts every other thing with mass. And since there's almost no mass inside, the cosmic web of galaxy superclusters on their edges

[05:38] are pulling things out of voids. The emptier of void is, the harder gravity is pulling on what remains. It's really like a tug-of-war where one side isn't even tried.

[05:50] Over time, voids are really only getting even emptier and the walls and knots around them denser and brighter. Would it be hard to fly into a cosmic void with a spaceship?

[06:02] Well, not technically. The hardest part is escaping the gravity of your home galaxy. It also doesn't make much sense because what exactly do you want to visit inside a void? It makes sense to fly into a void if you want to hide,

[06:16] like ready, ready hide. But what cosmic horror would be scary enough for a civilization to try to escape into a cosmic void. Galaxies in the crowded cluster regions like our Milky Way are very active,

[06:30] since its neighbors gravity tugs and pulls at it, and they collide and merge. Void galaxies are so isolated that they're aging in slow motion. They tend to be smaller, bluer, and full of gas,

[06:43] birthing new stars slower and calmer. So voice galaxies could be the last places that will stay habitable in our dying universe The last star in the universe will likely be born here So maybe in 100 trillion years or so a desperate alien race will embark on an impossible journey

[07:03] to stretch their existence just a bit longer inside a void galaxy. There's one more thing that makes void's unique places, dark energy, the mysterious force that most scientists think is accelerating the expansion of the universe and will ultimately cause its

[07:19] demise. We can't see dark energy do anything inside our galaxy or inside clusters, because there's too much stuff putting things together via gravity, but we can see its effects inside

[07:31] voids. Here, dark energy glows up the bubbles of nothing. This is where the acceleration of cosmic expansion becomes visible. As voids are getting larger and larger, they're breaking

[07:45] the structure for the universe, the beautiful galaxy filaments are slowly being ripped apart. As the emptiness encroaches, walls of thousands of galaxies are thinned out and pulled towards

[07:58] the edges, attracted by much denser regions of the margins, giving space to the emptiness of two voice bubbles becoming one. In the far, far future, supervoids will take over the observable universe,

[08:11] crushing clusters and expanding further and further until the entire observable universe is nothing more than a gigantic void of nothingness the loneliest place in existence

[08:25] Let's head back to Earth When we land, please exit through the gift shop and pick up a few souvenirs We created this latest space to let drop for all of you who've been traveling with us for so many years now

[08:39] While you're there, take a look around. You might discover a unique product dedicated to your favorite science topic. Everything is created with lots of care by our team of scientists and designers to inspire you and spark your curiosity.

[08:53] Thank you for traveling with Copsis on Space Tours. If you want to listen to the beautiful soundtrack without my annoying voice, well, it's up to you. Just select the audio track interlingual down here

[09:06] and watch the video again as a music video. you