Bootes Void: What is it?

Have you ever heard of the Boötes Void? It may sound like science fiction or dark magic wizardry, but it is not. The Boötes Void is very much existent, in the sense that not much exists inside of it.

The geographical center of America is 2.6 miles Northwest of a Kansas town called Lebanon. It is marked by a small monument with the American Flag. Imagine standing at this monument and you were the only person in America. From coast to coast and border to border, there was no one except you. Not even any animals. How lonely would you feel? Kicking it up multiple notches, how would you feel standing in the middle of a dark bubble spanning 330 million light years with nothing around you?

This is what the Boötes Void is. Voids are gaps between superclusters in outer space. They are common, and even the Milky Way is actually on the edge of what is called the Local Void. The Local Void spans 195 million light years in diameter, but the Boötes Void is still 1.7 times larger at 10.24 quintillion feet in diameter and .25% of the observable universe. Boötes should still contain at least 10,000 galaxies. Astronomers have only found 60. Of those galaxies discovered, they all have weird tubular shapes native to Boötes and found nowhere else in the observable universe.

If Earth was located in the center of this void, we would not have known there are other galaxies until the 1960s. With little knowledge of space, scientists are wondering if aliens could be responsible for Boötes. Intelligent life could have existed four-billion years ago. This means an alien civilization had four-billion years to develop technology.

What does four-billion years of technological evolution look like? It might look like the consumption of galaxies for food, fuel, and resources. This could account for the near spherical shape Boötes takes on. One scientist from a Harvard science journal says that this civilization spreads like a cancer, uniformly in all directions. Scientists are studying the surrounding galaxies to see if they begin to dim and disappear. If that happens, there is something very sinister going on.

Another theory of how Boötes exists is bubbles. When bubbles collide, they form one large bubble. Boötes Void could be made up of multiple voids drawn together through the gravity of surrounding galaxies.

Fleetwood’s notorious science and astronomer teacher, Mr. Todd Driesbach was asked in an interview about his views and thoughts on Boötes.

“It’s nothing too out of the ordinary,” Driesbach said.

He was later asked about the tubular shapes the void galaxies take.

“The shape, I don’t know,” Driesbach said. “I’ll have to look into this further; it is certainly interesting,”.

“It’s gotta be aliens,” junior Jassen Alexis said.

If aliens are responsible, we have some time yet. Boötes’s center is 700 million light years from us. Regardless, we know so little about space. It is easy for one’s imagination to run wild with Boötes. For now, there is nothing wrong with that.