page_title: Void (astronomy)
section_title: Large-scale structure
hierarchical_section_title: Void (astronomy) / Large-scale structure
caption_attribution_description: English: Voids in Local Supercluster
context_page_description: Cosmic voids are vast spaces between filaments, which contain very few or no galaxies. Voids typically have a diameter of 10 to 100 megaparsecs; particularly large voids, defined by the absence of rich superclusters, are sometimes called supervoids. They have less than one tenth of the average density of matter abundance that is considered typical for the observable universe. They were first discovered in 1978 in a pioneering study by Stephen Gregory and Laird A. Thompson at the Kitt Peak National Observatory.
  Voids are believed to have been formed by baryon acoustic oscillations in the Big Bang, collapses of mass followed by implosions of the compressed baryonic matter. Starting from initially small anisotropies from quantum fluctuations in the early universe, the anisotropies grew larger in scale over time. Regions of higher density collapsed more rapidly under gravity, eventually resulting in the large-scale, foam-like structure or "cosmic web" of voids and galaxy filaments seen today. Voids located in high-density environments are smaller than voids situated in low-density spaces of the universe.
context_section_description: The structure of our Universe can be broken down into components that can help describe the characteristics of individual regions of the cosmos. These are the main structural components of the cosmic web:
  Voids – vast, largely spherical regions with very low cosmic mean densities, up to 100 megaparsecs (Mpc) in diameter.
  Walls – the regions that contain the typical cosmic mean density of matter abundance. Walls can be further broken down into two smaller structural features:
  Clusters – highly concentrated zones where walls meet and intersect, adding to the effective size of the local wall.
  Filaments – the branching arms of walls that can stretch for tens of megaparsecs.
  Voids have a mean density less than a tenth of the average density of the universe. This serves as a working definition even though there is no single agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a void. The matter density value used for describing the cosmic mean density is usually based on a ratio of the number of galaxies per unit volume rather than the total mass of the matter contained in a unit volume.
caption: A map of galaxy voids
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