Universe Beige, not Turquoise

ChazeFroy writes: "The universe is actually beige, not turquoise. Researchers at John Hopkins University initially reported it was turquoise, but the software they used contained a flaw that implemented a non-standard white index to arrive at the mint chocolate chip green color." The other color was much nicer than this beige.

Comments

Three Questions

[Royster]

Before you may cross the bridge you must answer these questions three.

Q: Where are you from?
A: Johns Hopkins University.

Q: What is your professtion?
A: We are astronomers.

Q: What color is the Universe?
A:It's green... no, it's beige AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee!

I thought the Cosmic Background was Three Kelvin

[Mr. Neutron]

Use Plank's constant to find out what the peak wavelength at 3 degrees Kelvin (the cosmic bg temp) is. This is the color of the Universe, as it is the color you "see" in all directions (if your eyes could see this wavelength, that is).

surely

[cosmo7]

the question is not what color the universe is, but how to change it.

Re:I thought the Cosmic Background was Three Kelvi

[CheshireCatCO]

But most of the energy in the universe is NOT from the CMB. Remember the Stefan-Boltzmann law: energy per unit area goes like sigma T^4. 3 K is barely a blimp. The billions of stars in each of the billions of galaxies are at 1500 K or more (the sun is 5800 K, blue stars are hotter still). That T^4 comes in like a demon and means that most of the energy we perceive does NOT come from the CMB.

Re:Hmm...the universe and my underwear...

[monkeydo]

Funny how you didn't click all the links.

From Glazebrook's page:

"We admit the color of the Universe was something of a gimmick, to try and make our story on spectra more accessible. Nevertheless it is an actual calculable thing so we believe it is important to get it right."
And:
"Of course, our real motive for calculating the cosmic spectrum was really a lot more than producing these pretty color pictures. The color is interesting but in fact the cosmic spectrum is rich in detail and tells us a lot more about the history of star formation in the Universe. You may have noticed above that the cosmic spectrum contains dark lines and bright bands, these correspond to the characteristic emission and absorption of different elements."

So this actually reveals something about the makeup and history of the universe. Viola, science!

But this color isn't visible from Earth

[EricLivingston]

On the scientists' home page for this study, they talk about how they "de-redshifted" all the 200,000 colors before mixing them into the equation. I suppose this was to figure out what the color of each galaxy would be if you were parked nearby at zero relative velocity.

However, this isn't what you see from earth at all. Originally I thought they had simulated what would happen if you could "funnel" all the starlight on a dark night visible from Earth (or even outside our atmosphere) and created one beam from it. They've sort of done this, but in their model they've stopped the expansion of the universe and "corrected" the light to make it appear as if the universe is static and all those galaxies are not actually moving away from us.

So, I'm not sure what to make of this color - it's not one you'd ever actually see: it's not "real" in the sense you could measure it somewhere.