The Terrifying Scale of the Biggest Thing in The Universe... And How Impossibly Small We Are

Hey guys! We’re now live on Spotify🎧 Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rqQFYd... In 1976, two astronomers on an Arizona mountain drew a wedge of galaxies and found a region where the dots simply stopped. The gaps have only grown since: emptier than any vacuum we can make, hundreds of millions of light years wide, and one of them is pushing our galaxy right now. So how big is the biggest thing in the universe, and what does that make us? Tonight's path runs from an old globe marked with dragons to a cold patch on the oldest light in the sky. Settle in and let this slow walk through the emptiest places in the universe keep you company tonight. Subscribe to Sundown Science if you enjoy the long way around the universe. CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 1:31 The map with a hole in it 12:36 Nobody wanted the emptiness 23:24 Here be dragons 33:41 The web and its threads 43:38 The biggest thing is nothing 55:04 What lives in the dark 1:05:08 How nothing grows 1:15:46 The void that pushes 1:25:31 Too big to exist 1:36:58 The nothing that wins 1:47:29 The cleanest window 1:57:31 How small we are SOURCES An Historical View: The Discovery of Voids in the Galaxy Distribution (arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.1268 A Million Cubic Megaparsec Void in Bootes? (ApJ, 1981, NASA ADS) — https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/198... UH Scientist Maps Supercluster of Galaxies, Names It Laniakea (University of Hawaii) — https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2014/09/0... King Ghidorah Supercluster (arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.11970 Largest Superstructure in the Nearby Universe Unveiled: Quipu (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics) — https://www.mpe.mpg.de/8053119/news20... The FLAMINGO Project (arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.04024 Our Peculiar Motion Away from the Local Void (arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/abs/0705.4139 The Dipole Repeller (Nature Astronomy, 2017) — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4155... A Cosmic Watershed: the WVF Void Detection Technique (arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.2788 New Survey Hints at Exotic Origin for the Cold Spot (Phys.org) — https://phys.org/news/2017-04-survey-... Euclid: Cosmological Forecasts from the Void Size Function (arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.11525 NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Launches (NASA) — https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nas... — Disclaimer: All videos are produced for entertainment and education. Factual claims are sourced from peer-reviewed research and official scientific institutions. Where a video explores speculation, fringe theories, or the creator's own analysis, it is clearly labeled as such. Sundown Science is not a news outlet. Watch at your own discretion. #CosmicVoids #BootesVoid