In 1999 Rien van de Weygaert of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and Yehuda Hoffman of Hebrew University in Jerusalem argued that the Local Volume is caught in a cosmic tug - of - war between surrounding galaxy clusters.
«I remember very prominent cosmologists for a long time said, «Oh, voids, they're not important,»» says University of Groningen astrophysicist Rien van de Weygaert, a pioneer in the field of void research.