WASHINGTON—Saying the finding would further scientists’ understanding of the most remote parts of the universe, NASA astronomers announced at a press conference Thursday that they had discovered a previously unknown cluster of nothingness in deep space. “Through the use of high-resolution infrared imaging, we have identified a large grouping of total emptiness roughly 8.5 billion light-years away that had heretofore gone undetected,” said NASA lead researcher Edward Hefter, adding that the newly discovered blank expanse, which is located between two immense regions of nothing, was far larger and more insignificant in scope than first thought. “We are continuing to investigate the age and origin of the emptiness, but it will be a slow process given that there is absolutely nothing in the cluster to study. However, initial data indicate that the space likely formed when a smaller void merged with a larger vacuum.” Hefter added that the distant cluster of nothingness strongly resembles 481 million similar such regions discovered in recent decades.