this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Space is REALLY BIG and SUPER EMPTY
There are sections of space called "voids" where there's almost nothing. Like even LESS nothing than usual.
The largest one we know of is called the Böotes (super)Void. In 200,000,000 light-years, there are around 60 galaxies.
You could duplicate our galaxy around 2,300 times and still not reach from edge to edge.
If we were in the center of the void, we wouldn't have discovered other galaxies even exist until telescopes got sophisticated, large, and sensitive enough to see the faint and distant galaxies that were closest. Sometime in the late 1960s/early 70s, most likely.
That's a hella big Böotes; universe has serious cake
But actually on a real note do you think humans would have even invented telescopes that good by then if we were in the center void like that? How can you tell if a telescope is getting better if you don't have any stars to compare to, maybe just seeking out sharper images of planets we would have stumbled into it eventually? Also that would mean that the planets would be really incredibly noticable in the night sky
Astronomy history is fascinating to me. We used to think that other galaxies were just nebula in the milky way.
We would still have all the stars from our own galaxy to study, but I think that given how much we have improved telescopes with the intent on studying CLOSE stars, those improvements would have led to the discovery of galaxies 100 million LY+ away.
Fun fact: we don't know what's on the other side of the galactic disc from us. As we look toward Sag A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, there's too much dust and non-luminous matter in the way, and we can't really see what's past a certain point. There's also something pulling all the galaxies around us (and us) toward it, in that big patch of what we can't see. It's called the Great Attractor. We know it's pulling on us because of red/blue shift of surrounding galaxies, but we don't actually know what it is that's pulling. It COULD be a large cluster of galaxies whose gravity is just pulling us all together, but it might also be some cosmic eldritch horror that's literally consuming the universe. That last one is slightly less likely though...