The yawn of the void. A siren call for the unimaginative" ― Dean Cavanagh

"Don't ask too much for space. They grow into voids." ― Karishma Magvan Cosmic voids are vast spaces between filaments (the largest-scale structures in the Universe), 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.[2] Voids appear to correlate with the observed temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) because of the Sachs–Wolfe effect. Colder regions correlate with voids and hotter regions correlate with filaments because of gravitational redshifting. As the Sachs–Wolfe effect is only significant if the Universe is dominated by radiation or dark energy, the existence of voids is significant in providing physical evidence for dark energy.[3] "Creation has become so broad, there is no emptiness. Everything swarms and seethes. The void has destroyed itself; creation is its wound, we are its drops of blood, the world is the grave in which it rots." ― Georg Büchner, Dantons Tod 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.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. The situation on Earth today is too dire for us to act from habit—to reenact again and again the same kinds of solutions that brought us to our present extremity. Where does the wisdom to act in entirely new ways come from? It comes from nowhere, from the void; it comes from inaction. When we see it, we realize it was right in front of us all along. It is never far away; yet at the same time it is in a different universe—a different Story of the World." ― Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

There exist a number of ways for finding voids with the results of large-scale surveys of the Universe. Of the many different algorithms, virtually all fall into one of three general categories.[24] The first class consists of void finders that try to find empty regions of space based on local galaxy density.[25] The second class are those which try to find voids via the geometrical structures in the dark matter distribution as suggested by the galaxies. The third class is made up of those finders which identify structures dynamically by using gravitationally unstable points in the distribution of dark matter. For the palace was but emptiness, a hole in a labyrinth of lines, a skyward precipice." ― Paul Willems, The Cathedral of Mist This first class method uses each galaxy in a catalog as its target and then uses the Nearest Neighbor Approximation to calculate the cosmic density in the region contained in a spherical radius determined by the distance to the third closest galaxy.[28] El Ad & Piran introduced this method in 1997 to allow a quick and effective method for standardizing the cataloging of voids. Once the spherical cells are mined from all of the structure data, each cell is expanded until the underdensity returns to average expected wall density values. One of the helpful features of void regions is that their boundaries are very distinct and defined, with a cosmic mean density that starts at 10% in the body and quickly rises to 20% at the edge and then to 100% in the walls directly outside the edges. The remaining walls and overlapping void regions are then gridded into respectively distinct and intertwining zones of filaments, clusters, and near-empty voids. Any overlap of more than 10% with already known voids are considered to be subregions within those known voids. All voids admitted to the catalog had a minimum radius of 10 Mpc in order to ensure all identified voids were not accidentally cataloged due to sampling errors This particular second class algorithm uses a Voronoi tessellation technique and mock border particles in order to categorize regions based on a high density contrasting border with a very low amount of bias.[30] Neyrinck introduced this algorithm in 2008 with the purpose of introducing a method that did not contain free parameters or presumed shape tessellations. Therefore, this technique can create more accurately shaped and sized void regions. Although this algorithm has some advantages in shape and size, it has been criticized often for sometimes providing loosely defined results. Since it has no free parameters, it mostly finds small and trivial voids, although the algorithm places a statistical significance on each void it finds. A physical significance parameter can be applied in order to reduce the number of trivial voids by including a minimum density to average density ratio of at least 1:5. Subvoids are also identified using this process which raises more philosophical questions on what qualifies as a void. "In a lifeworld, where we can be what we are, and not what people expect us to be, we can escape a blank and void existence, which is linked to wrecking ennui. Boredom often slips into revulsion and nausea, for not being able to find an identity and not succeeding in acquiring individuality with the quality of authenticity. ("Like a frozen image")" ― Erik Pevernagie.