The Void
I've always enjoyed the Voyager episode "Night" but for a few logical
flaws, one being the fact that once they emerge from the area the stars
all of a sudden blink into existence as if they were coming out of a
haze. Though the area would be dark, you should be able to see some
stars. They would be dim but visible, just as many stars more then
2,500 light years away (the diameter of the Void) can be viewed by us
from Earth.
Then I got to thinking about how this might be
possible. There are Dark Nebulae made of small, solid grains of cosmic
dust that block visible light but glow in Infrared. This is interesting
since the alien on Voyager was invisible until they shown a light on it
- it's possible it could have been an Infrared light. He had adapted to
living in the area perfectly.
Dark Nebulae:
Composed
of small solid grains of cosmic dust. These dark nebulae block visible
light and glow in Infrared. Dark Nebulae can hide entire galaxies. They
often reveal themselves by an absence of stars in an area.
Additionally,
Voyager was unable to make use of it's sensors to detect stars on the
other side of the Void because the theta radiation being produced by
the contaminated antimatter :-/
that the Malon were dumping in the area. So, with sensors active they
could have easily seen the stars and known how far they had to go using
other spectra, but they were reliant on visual only, thus they were
unable to see them.
So, given that information, the final scene
of them emerging from a haze into a field of stars actually makes
sense. They were emerging from the massive nebula.
Clearly
there were stars in the Void itself, somewhere for the aliens to live,
and for the vortex to be created from, you just can't see them without
the aid of other spectra besides visible light - which was impossible
at the time because of the Malon pollution.
If you'd prefer to stick with there being no or few stars though, which does not negate the above explanation, then...
The
Milky Way most likely collided with a galaxy that was larger then it is
some billions of years ago, stripping the Milky Way of a stream of
stars in that part of the galaxy between the Sagittarius and Centaurus
Arms where Voyager was travelling at the time.
This "stripping
of stars" from smaller galaxies to larger galaxies is not unusual, in
fact the Milky Way is currently doing exactly that to the Sagittarius
Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy which is on the far side of the galactic core
from us and was only discovered as late as 1994.
(Theory by Bond, James Bond)