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Going Back to the Origin of the Cosmic Microwave Background

The creation of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is one of the effects that occurred a few thousand years following the Big Bang. It’s a faint radiation left over from that time that began cooling as the universe expanded. Currently, its temperature sits as around 2.73 Kelvin (-454.75 degrees Fahrenheit) which is a far cry from its original temperature of about 3,000 Kelvin (around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit).


As the universe continued to expand most irregularities were smoother out although there are still some anomalies that remain. One example is the Cold Spot that’s found in the CMB. It was first discovered back in 2002 by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe spacecraft and confirmed again by the Planck satellite in 2013.

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) as observed by Planck. The CMB is a snapshot of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when the Universe was just 380,000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities. Photo: ESA and the Planck Collaboration
The map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky produced by the Planck satellite. Red represents slightly warmer regions and blue slightly cooler regions. The Cold Spot is shown in the inset, with coordinates on the x- and y-axes, and the temperature difference in millionths of a degree on the scale at the bottom. Photo: ESA and Durham University


The Cold Spot’s temperature is only a fraction lower than its surroundings, but even that deviation has a probability of the occurrence of less than 2 percent. Upon deeper scrutiny of around 7,000 galaxies, postgraduate student Ruari Mackenzie and Professor Tom Shanks of Durham University, U.K. and a team of researchers discovered that the Cold Spot isn’t just one big void.  It’s actually split into smaller voids that are each surrounded by clusters of galaxies with the same density as found elsewhere in the universe.

The 3-D galaxy distribution in the foreground of the CMB Cold Spot, where each point is a cluster of galaxies. The galaxy distribution in the Cold Spot (black points, at right) is compared to the same in an area with no background Cold Spot (red points, at left). The number and size of low galaxy density regions in both areas are similar, making it hard to explain the existence of the CMB Cold Spot by the presence of “voids.” Photo: Durham University


In a recent statement, Mackenzie explained, “The voids we have detected cannot explain the Cold Spot under standard cosmology. There is the possibility that some non-standard model could be proposed to link the two in the future but our data place powerful constraints on any attempt to do that.”  Shanks offers another possibility, “Perhaps the most exciting of these is that the Cold Spot was caused by a collision between our universe and another bubble universe.  If further, more detailed, analysis of CMB data proves this to be the case the Cold Spot might be taken as the first evidence for the multiverse – and billions of other universes may exist like our own.”


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