The Gift of the Cosmic Voids

Guest Essay

Nov. 3, 2024, 9:00 a.m. ET

Dr. Sutter is a theoretical cosmologist.

Nietzsche was wrong: When you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss does not gaze back into you. Instead, the void remains silent, relentless and frightening in its enormity. But when we peer into the infinite blackness that defines the expanse of our universe, we are offered a choice. We can recoil in fear and disregard our humanity in the face of sheer cosmic dread. Or we can transform the shadows of the cosmos into a light that illuminates the uniqueness of everything we know here on Earth.

I’m a cosmologist, the kind of scientist who studies the origin, history and evolution of the universe. I have spent my career researching one special part of the universe called cosmic voids: the vast expanses of nothing that stretch between the galaxies. Most of our universe is void — somewhere around 80 percent of the volume of the cosmos is made of nothing at all.

By strict accounting of cosmic abundances, our planet and the life we find here amount to essentially zero. Insignificant. A small speck of blue and green suspended in an ocean of night, a tiny bit of rock and water orbiting just another star. The great forces that shape our universe have grown the voids over billions of years, and their present-day monstrousness puts cosmic insignificance into stark relief. Forget planets and stars; at these scales, even mighty galaxies are reduced to mere dots of light.

There is a temptation, when faced with the true scale of the empty cosmos, to look at our tiny world with nihilism. To feel that our great achievements amount to nothing. That our history fails to leave a mark. That our concerns and anxieties are rendered meaningless. That our very humanity is reduced to irrelevancy.

I have spent years working to understand what cosmic voids teach us about the wider universe and its history. And in the course of my studies, I have learned to reject that temptation.

Yes, the universe is mostly void, but we have found many wonders in those great expanses. The voids don’t simply exist; they define and provide contrast to the galaxies that surround them. The properties of the voids — their shapes and sizes and so on — reflect the mysterious forces that govern the evolution of the universe. Within the voids we find the occasional dim dwarf galaxy, like an oasis in the desert. And we have found that the voids are brimming with cosmic energies that may someday overwhelm the rest of the universe.

It’s true that in cosmic terms, Earth is neither large nor long-lived. But that is only one way of measuring significance. Compared with the voids, there is something special happening on our planet. Despite decades of searching, Earth is still the only known place in the entire universe where conscious beings raise their curious eyes to the sky and wonder.

Earth is the only known place where humanity exists — where humanity can exist. It is the only known place where laughter, love, anger and joy exist. The only known place where we can find dance, music, art, politics and cosmology.

Our disagreements and jealousies and all the beautiful complexities that make us human aren’t meaningless. The presence and dominance of the cosmic voids guarantee the opposite — the stories and experiences we fill our lives with are special precisely because they will never happen in the empty expanse of most of the universe.

I have learned that the same lessons that cosmic voids teach us are found in the voids we encounter in our own lives. Voids sharpen and define; they create contrast; they are full of potential. The pain we feel from loss is the last reminder of the gift of a life deeply loved. The silence before a performance begins is sparkling with electric anticipation. Our choice to ignore anxiety-inducing news is necessary to allow us to focus on what matters.

Artists and philosophers have long understood the power of the void. The 12th-century Buddhist monk and poet Saigyo reflected on the gaps between falling raindrops, noting that the pauses between their sounds were just as important as the drops themselves, if not more so. The composer John Cage challenged us with “4ʹ33ʺ,” a performance consisting entirely of silence, creating a manifestation of the void that audiences sought to fill with awkward coughs and nervous laughter, which became its own music. The famed Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas celebrated the utility of negative spaces, proclaiming, “Where there is nothing, everything is possible.” For the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the void was a psychological space that we must enter to realize our full potential and forge a new life.

Billions of years from now the sun will engorge and Earth will turn to dust. The cosmic voids, guardians of great nothingness, will remain. That bare fact, at first uncomfortable, gives us the ability to treasure what we’re given.

Tell a joke to your friends. Fight for what you believe in. Call your mother. Create something the cosmos hasn’t seen before. The implacability of the cosmic voids calls us to action. The universe won’t do anything for us except give us the freedom to exist. What we do with that existence is entirely up to us. It is our responsibility to imbue the cosmos with meaning and purpose.

Paul M. Sutter is a theoretical cosmologist, science communicator and adviser to NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program. He is the author of “Your Place in the Universe: Understanding Our Big, Messy Existence.”

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