Astronomers have discovered the largest known structure in the universe, but it may not be what you think it is. The biggest structure ever identified in the universe is a gigantic hole in the universe known as the supervoid.
The supervoid is approximately 10 to 20 times larger than most voids found in the universe at 1.8 billion light years across. "This is probably the biggest we've ever seen, I mean it is huge," astronomer Istvan Szapudi says. "My hypothesis was that this particular cold part could be due to an extremely large void."
"The fact that the cold spot is there and the void is there and they are both very rare [means] it is very unlikely that they would not have anything to do with each other."
The supervoid is one explanation for the so called "cold spot," which has been a mystery to astronomers for many years.
"[The] cold spot seems to defy physics in the sense that you would expect only a small amount of variation [in temperature] and the cold spot seems to exceed the amount of variation," the Australian Astronomical Observatory's Fred Watson says.
"So [it] was an anomaly, it was something that puzzled scientists and hinted that there might be things going on that we don't understand. What we call 'new physics".
He added that although the discovery of a giant void near a cold spot may not affect our everyday lives, the science could one day have a bigger impact.
"The answer is, it teaches us about things that may one day actually effect our lives," Mr Watson said. "If we can understand the physical processes that are taking place in these extreme circumstances, then it may well influence the way technology develops perhaps in 100 years time [or] turn out to have practical benefits. You've only got to look back through history to see discoveries that came as a result to people's curiosity that eventually find their way into everyday technology."
A giant hole may not seem exciting, but for scientists, the rare find is spectacular. "It just pushed the explanation one layer deeper," Roberto Trotta, a cosmologist at Imperial College London, said. "Now we have to figure out how does the void itself form."
But how a gigantic hole in the universe forms in the first place is still a mystery that remains unanswered and, for now at least, is one that will continue to elude scientists.
