The deepest voids of space appear completely empty, but this is an illusion. In reality, wherever you go in the Universe, you are never alone — invisible companions, high-energy particles and ancient light, fill even the most remote corners of space.
As you travel through the Universe, you are constantly bombarded by streams of particles born in the most catastrophic events. These are cosmic rays and neutrinos. They are formed as a result of supernova explosions, neutron star collisions and from the surrounding space near black holes, accelerating to almost the speed of light.
We are protected on Earth by the atmosphere and magnetic field, but even these are not perfect shields. Every second, one cosmic ray hits you. Neutrinos, on the other hand, are true ‘ghosts.’ Their ability to interact with matter is incredibly small. About a trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second, and only one of them in your entire lifetime may strike the nucleus of one of your atoms. These particles travel so freely through space that astrophysicists have traced their origin to other galaxies.
Universal echo of the Big Bang
However, even cosmic rays and neutrinos play only a secondary role in the cosmic orchestra. More than 99.9% of all photons in the Universe belong to cosmic microwave background radiation. This is ancient light, a relic of an era when the Universe was only 380,000 years old.
Then the cosmos cooled enough for light to finally travel freely through space. Every particle in the newborn Universe emitted this light, and it has been travelling ever since, stretching as the cosmos expands. At first, it was incredibly hot, but over 13 billion years, it has cooled to just 2.7 K, entering the microwave range. That is why we call it the microwave background.
Life in the ‘void’: does it have any warmth?
So, if you suddenly find yourself in the deepest intergalactic void, you will not be alone. You will be surrounded by:
- Rare but regular ‘shots’ of cosmic rays.
- A stream of trillions of neutrinos imperceptibly piercing you.
- The uniform, omnipresent light of the relic background.
Unfortunately, this company does not provide much warmth. Although microwave background radiation is the most abundant in the Universe, its energy is negligible. Its temperature is only three degrees above absolute zero. If you were in the vacuum of space, this radiation would prevent your body from cooling below this mark, but this is, of course, not enough to survive.
So, cosmic ‘’void’’ is not a vacuum in the full sense of the word. It is a space filled with traces of the greatest cosmic catastrophes and the quiet echoes of the birth of the Universe. And these invisible satellites accompany each and every one of us.
We previously reported that we may be living on the edge of a supervoid.
According to universetoday.com
