Scientists Found Nothing, Delighted

News flash: nothing has been found in the universe, reports a University of Minnesota team of astronomers—or, at least, that they have found an “enormous void” in space with nothing in it.

The void is almost a billion light-years across, devoid, as it were, of both ordinary matter and theorized “dark matter.”

The astronomers, who will officially report their discovery in an upcoming paper in Astrophysical Journal, discovered the void using data from the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s VLA (Very Large Array) Sky Survey, a collection of 27 radio telescopes in New Mexico. The void is almost a billion light-years across, devoid, as it were, of both ordinary matter and theorized “dark matter.” It is located “roughly” 6–10 billion light-years away in the direction of the constellation Eridanus. The hole is “about 1,000 times the volume of what would be expected in typical cosmic gaps.”

The find is being used to support the big bang model’s explanation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, a faint “glow”—interpreted by some as originating from “shortly” after the big bang—that shines around us with near constancy.

As with other astrophysical discoveries, the find is being neatly integrated in “inflation theory,” which itself was effectively a patch to explain away problems in older versions of the big bang model. We take the same view with this new discovery that Dr. Jason Lisle and Ken Ham did in response to related news last year:

Although most secular astronomers believe that the CMB is the result of a “big bang,” there is really no reason to believe this. Big bang supporters believe that tiny fluctuations in the CMB eventually became stars and galaxies. But such an idea comes from a [presupposed] belief in the big bang.

In other words, these scientists are interpreting the evidence based on their worldview—not the other way around. In the same way, scientists who accept the Bible’s account of origins interpret the CMB through the lens of Genesis 1 (and other passages).

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