In 1981, while conducting a redshift survey of the distribution of galaxies, astronomers spotted something (or nothing) that they weren't expecting.
"[W]e discovered that the redshift distributions in each of the three northern fields showed an identical 6,000 [kilometers per second] gap. Because these fields were separated by angles of ~35°, this suggested the existence of a large void in the galaxy distribution of at least comparable angular diameter," the team wrote in a paper in 1987, adding, "The low density of this region is of high statistical significance and does not appear easily reconcilable with any of the popular models for the growth structure in the universe."
Lying in the vicinity of the Boötes constellation, it became known as the Boötes Void, or sometimes the Great Nothing. For a long time, it was the largest known void in the universe, spanning 330 million light-years across. To put that in context, that's about 0.35 percent of the diameter of the entire observable universe.
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