Voids in the Vacuum
of space
a paper by:
Capt. DL Wey
DCOSR: SFS -- SFC
Recent research, which had been conducted in an area of space long considered devoid of any common elements, has uncovered traces of carbon. That carbon should be what was found is not, in itself, unusual [being an essential component in the formation of stars].
What is unusual is that it should be found in an area where no stars or galaxies have ever been known to exist.
One theory that has been put forth to account for this is that the carbon itself is the last remaining trace of a generation of stars that lived and died not long after the big bang; Perhaps even before the first galaxies were formed.
With this finding, an old and controversial theory once more is brought to light, That there were stars before there were galaxies.
According to this theory: A generation of massive stars were created from condensed cosmic hydrogen and helium moments after the Big Bang.
Because of their size, the theory holds, the stellar bodies quickly consumed their nuclear fuel, and died as exploding supernovae. The resulting explosions rapidly heated the universe to an extent that only clouds of gas formed, which later became the galaxies, and stellar bodies, we know today.
And as a consequence of these formations, large areas of interstellar space exist that contain virtually no starstuff at all.
One of the largest of these voids is the one designated Bo
Ötes [some 250 million light years in diameter and some 700 million light years from earth].It has been theorized that, if the Milky Way galaxy had been in the center of the Bo
Ötes void, knowledge of the existence of other galaxies might not have occurred until well into the 20th century.But the existence of this void [and others like it] raises many more questions than either astronomers or cosmologists currently can answer.
Because it is currently believed that the universe is not old enough to create such phenomenon, such voids are thought to be full of "Dark Matter" [material not readily detected by current means]. But the narrow band of galaxies that were found to exist within the Bo
Ötes void point to the possibility that it was created by the merging of two smaller voids. For the existence of such smaller ones are common, and do not upset the current scientific beliefs of how the universe was formed.