Intergalactic Voids Are Not So Empty - 'Tendrils' Pierce Cosmic Bubbles | Animation

Once again, observation has forced a change in a long held theory. For the past couple of decades, astrophysicists have been picturing the texture of the Universe as kind of foamy: Dense clusters and long connecting filaments of galaxies, with vast empty bubbles between them. A cosmic web, it’s been called with filigrees of glowing galaxies defining the perimeters of gigantic areas mostly devoid of matter. Now, a team of Australian radio astronomers has identified petite peninsulas of pale galaxies poking into those voids. The team conducted the most comprehensive census of the southern sky ever completed. Called tendrils, for now, these types of structures have never been seen before. They may turn out to crisscross and perhaps interconnect within the bubbles, forming networks of galactic archipelagos… ….. and quite dramatically cutting down the volume of what was understood to be unpopulated space. That would force astrophysicists to re-think what they thought they knew about how the cosmos is built. For Space.com, I’m Dave Brody

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Astronomers observing with the Anglo-Australian Telescope have found a strangely arranged population of faint galaxies penetrating what were thought to be huge empty regions of space. Termed 'tendrils' these strings of matter may interconnect.

Credit: http://ift.tt/NTONiV University/SDSS/GAMA