More Not There Than We Thought

Whole lot of hoopla about nothing:

WASHINGTON - Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.

So how do they know it's there? Or not there? Or, does not knowing that anything is there equate to knowing that nothing isn't? Because, not to brag, I never even suspected anything was there, so that sorta puts me on the cutting edge of isn't-there science. And don't try claiming that you also didn't know there was anything not there, unless you spent the many long hours that I didn't, not peering through a homemade telescope, not searching for something you would never not find.