Into the Void (S&T Feb 2015)

[jabeoo1]

This post is inspired from the information in February 2015's Sky & Telescope magazine from the article 'Into the Void' by Marcus Woo.

In areas described as voids, galaxy density is significantly lower than the areas more local to us.  To compare, our neck of the woods 'the local group' has around 60 galaxies squeezed into a area 10 million light years across.  The Bootes void has only 60 galaxies diluted in a staggering 300 million light years of space, this is 10 times fewer than the cosmic average & 1000 times fewer than a galaxy cluster. 

Groups of galaxies tend to encourage merging, glancing and long distance collision courses (such as the Andromeda/Milky).  This disruption makes a fertile breeding grounds for star birth.   To further complicate the balance galactic halos of hot gas (as detected by Chandra around out own galaxy) extend out thousands of light years beyond the the spirals edges and are able to sheer gas from passing galaxies making infertile breeding grounds for star birth.  

These areas of desolation harbour unique specimens.  Being away from all this disruption these galaxies form much slower and rely on primordial gas flows along cosmological filaments.  I read somewhere these filaments are much straighter than the ones surrounding the areas such as our own due to the lack of influences.  These slow tributaries appear to aid the birth of simple, small, spiral, faint blue galaxies.   They are able to form many new stars compared with galaxies in our nearby groups which seem to have all but given up on making significant star formation. 

I recommend reading the article & hope that it is okay with the forum to re-word the material as above with the reference to S&T & M.Woo.