Have you ever felt like you’re stuck inside a pointless, empty, and futile existence where happiness is an illusion and nothingness stretches on forever? Well, good news! You are! At the 2025 National Astronomy Meeting, a team of astronomers presented a convincing hypothesis that Earth is located in a particularly depressing part of the universe.
They theorize that the Earth (and the entire Milky Way) might be inside “a vast cosmic void”, an isolated region where not much happens and nothing ever changes. Or, basically, the interstellar equivalent of Des Moines, Iowa.
And, depressingly, it’s only going to get worse. The University of Portsmouth’s Dr. Indranil Banik explained: “If we were inside a void, the gravity of denser external regions would pull matter outward, causing the void to become even emptier over time.” Yeah, that tracks.
hi! astrophysicist here. this is true and you should get really scared and start screaming and crying and throwing up https://t.co/el1DZbLNlG
— anna !!!
(@frogs4girls) July 11, 2025
The ghetto part of the Cosmos
Responses seem to be people nodding in agreement as they conclude: “We in the ghetto part of the Cosmos?”, that we live “in the space boonies”, or that Earth is officially in “cosmic prison”.
The more optimistic point out that being in the middle of nowhere might not be such a bad thing after all. After all, being in a void means conditions might be a bit calmer than elsewhere in the universe, allowing life the time and peace to evolve into its current complex state.
Perhaps elsewhere in the galaxy, potentially viable planets spend their days being bombarded by the kinds of asteroids that wiped out the dinosaurs, preventing civilizations from forming. This might be why we haven’t detected any alien societies with advanced tech, despite the multiple telescopes monitoring space for radio signals that might indicate extraterrestrial life.
Even so, perhaps the best response was simply, “Still gotta go to work tomorrow. Boss said he ‘didn’t care’ when I told him this.” Yes, we’re in a void, and yes, existence is ultimately futile. After all, on a galactic timescale, the atoms that make up your body are only “you” for the blink of an eye, and even they’ll one day be consumed by the sun when it goes supernova and swallows up the Earth.
But if we live in a pointless void, at least it’s our void. Might as well make the best of it and appreciate that humanity has some extra galactic legroom.
