Nietzsche was wrong: When you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss does not gaze back into you. Instead, the void remains silent, relentless and frightening in its enormity. But when we peer into the infinite blackness that defines the expanse of our universe, we are offered a choice. We can recoil in fear and disregard our humanity in the face of sheer cosmic dread. Or we can transform the shadows of the cosmos into a light that illuminates the uniqueness of everything we know here on Earth.

I’m a cosmologist, the kind of scientist who studies the origin, history and evolution of the universe. I have spent my career researching one special part of the universe called cosmic voids: the vast expanses of nothing that stretch between the galaxies. Most of our universe is void — somewhere around 80 percent of the volume of the cosmos is made of nothing at all.

By strict accounting of cosmic abundances, our planet and the life we find here amount to essentially zero. Insignificant. A small speck of blue and green suspended in an ocean of night, a tiny bit of rock and water orbiting just another star. The great forces that shape our universe have grown the voids over billions of years, and their present-day monstrousness puts cosmic insignificance into stark relief. Forget planets and stars; at these scales, even mighty galaxies are reduced to mere dots of light.

There is a temptation, when faced with the true scale of the empty cosmos, to look at our tiny world with nihilism. To feel that our great achievements amount to nothing. That our history fails to leave a mark. That our concerns and anxieties are rendered meaningless. That our very humanity is reduced to irrelevancy.

I have spent years working to understand what cosmic voids teach us about the wider universe and its history. And in the course of my studies, I have learned to reject that temptation.

Yes, the universe is mostly void, but we have found many wonders in those great expanses. The voids don’t simply exist; they define and provide contrast to the galaxies that surround them. The properties of the voids — their shapes and sizes and so on — reflect the mysterious forces that govern the evolution of the universe. Within the voids we find the occasional dim dwarf galaxy, like an oasis in the desert. And we have found that the voids are brimming with cosmic energies that may someday overwhelm the rest of the universe.