Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mysterious "Cold Spot": Fingerprint of Largest Structure In the Universe?

Posted by samzenpus on from the biggest-there-is dept.

astroengine writes At the furthest-most reaches of the observable universe lies one of the most enigmatic mysteries of modern cosmology: the cosmic microwave background (CMB) Cold Spot. Discovered in 2004, this strange feature etched into the primordial echo of the Big Bang has been the focus of many hypotheses — could it be the presence of another universe? Or is it just instrumental error? Now, astronomers may have acquired strong evidence as to the Cold Spot's origin and, perhaps unsurprisingly, no multiverse hypothesis is required. But it's not instrumental error either. It could be a vast "supervoid" around 1.8 billion light-years wide that is altering the characteristics of the CMB radiation traveling through it.

2 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Poor Me by JimSadler · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I seem to be limited to reason. When space is defined as nothing I have all kinds of issues with nothing having an effect on a big pile of something. Maybe we need to get rid of the word space and go back 150 years and call space the ether or some other mysterious material. Or i could just make up some babble that some people will pretend to understand. Example: Space is the expression of the differential between dark matter and matter acted upon by both energy and dark energy. Now freshmen light your pipes and ponder the truth of my conjecture.

  2. Thought to be a supervoid by PaulMattSutter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The universe is full of voids - large regions of space empty of matter. Ever since the detection of the Cold Spot, it's been speculated that a "supervoid" could be responsible, but it was thought that a void that large would not fit current understandings of structure formation - essentially trading a too-cold spot in the CMB for a too-big hole in the matter distribution.

    But this work, which was made public a year ago and just now got through the referee process, showed that there *is* a supervoid in the direction of the Cold Spot. They found it by looking at the distribution of galaxies in that direction. It turns out that it is a big void, but not very empty; more like a wide shallow dish than a small deep bowl. This can both explain the Cold Spot and be compatible with our understanding of how structure forms.