Astronomers have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies and gas, as well as the mysterious, unseen "dark matter".

According to Lawrence Rudnick, University of Minnesota astronomy professor, this discovery dwarfs all holes or voids previously discovered.

"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said Rudnick.

"What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe," said associate professor Liliya Williams, also of the University of Minnesota.

Rudnick said they drew their conclusion by studying data from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), a project that imaged the entire sky visible to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, part of the National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

He said their study of the NVSS data showed a remarkable drop in the number of galaxies in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus, southwest of Orion.

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