Sunday, August 26, 2007

Gaping hole found in universe

A giant hole in the Universe is devoid of galaxies, stars and even lacks dark matter, astronomers said on Thursday. The void is nearly a billion light-years across and astronomers have no idea why it is there. Lawrence Rudnick writing in the Astrophysical Journal, with colleagues Shea Brown and Liliya Williams said they were examining a cold spot , and found the giant hole. "What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe," Williams said in a statement. The astronomers said the region even appeared to lack dark matter, which cannot be seen directly but is usually detected by measuring gravitational forces.

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